Even though he said he would veto it, President Obama has announced that he will sign the National Defense Authorization Bill that gives him and the military the authority to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens suspected of supporting terrorist activity. I am not surprised because Obama lies all the time about everything and he already claims to have the power to order any person in the world assassinated, no matter where situated and whether or not a U.S. citizen, if he decides that person is a terrorist or has provided material support for terrorism.

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Emphasis supplied.

Nothing explicit or implicit in the Fifth Amendment creates or justifies an exception to the Due Process Clause that I italicized, and if you carefully listen with your heart, you can almost hear our Founding Fathers shouting, “NO.”

Using post-conviction DNA testing, the Innocence Project, which was formed by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City approximately 20 years ago, has exonerated 282 innocent people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes. 17 people were on death row awaiting execution when they were exonerated.

“The Disturbing Case of Eddie Lowery” will be shown tomorrow night (Friday, December 16th) on MSNBC at 10 PM. He is one of those 282 innocent people. Mr. Lowery falsely confessed to a rape he did not commit and spent 10 years in prison before he was exonerated. You can visit the website for the Innocence Project and watch a preview of tomorrow night’s show here.

The Death Penalty Information Center issued a report today entitled, “The Death Penalty in 2011: Year End Report, which you can read here.

The Center reports that, while 1277 people sentenced to death since 1976 in the U.S. have been executed, 139 people sentenced to death have been exonerated (this number includes the 17 people exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing). That is more than 10% of the number of people executed.

The high number of post-conviction exonerations does not inspire confidence in the ability of the criminal-justice system to only convict the guilty and always acquit the innocent, despite due process of law.

Researchers have identified seven causes of wrongful convictions. They are:

1. Mistaken eyewitness testimony;

2. Police misconduct;

3. Prosecutorial misconduct;

4. Forensic fraud;

5. Ineffective assistance of counsel;

6. False confessions; and

7. Jailhouse informants.

To the extent we have information about the people detained at Guantanamo, approximately 80 to 90% are innocent. Most of the people detained by the U.S. military there and other places were identified by paid informants as terrorists and many of them confessed while being tortured.

There is no evidence-based reason to believe that the military is any better at only convicting the guilty and always acquitting the innocent than the civilian criminal-justice system. In fact, given the kangaroo-court-style military tribunal process, there is good reason to believe that there is a much higher probability of wrongful convictions by military tribunals.

Despite all of the well-documented examples of the wrongful conviction of innocent people accorded due process of law in civilian courts and the identification of the causes of those wrongful convictions, President Obama apparently would have us believe that he and his review panel would never make a mistake and order the assassination of an innocent person.

And now the U.S. Congress has granted him the authority to order U.S. citizens, whom he suspects of providing material support to terrorists, detained indefinitely by the U.S. military without access to lawyers and the civilian courts.

This is an egregious and unpardonable sin against the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Rule of Law, and we the people of the United States.

Given the secretive manner in which senators Carl Levin (D) and John McCain (R) cooked-up this law behind closed doors without conducting any hearings or calling any witnesses, I cannot help but believe that this law was enacted with the OWS protests in mind.

Everyone who participated in drafting, supporting, and enacting this horrific law is unfit to serve in government. They should be immediately removed from office and forever barred from serving in public office in the future in any capacity.

Let December 15, 2011 forever be known as America’s National Day of Shame.

Cross posted from my law blog.