Carnival of Justice: Military Commissions & Guantanamo Bay
Every trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO) brings with it a strange cocktail of emotions. The excitement of prosecuting before a historic military tribunal, the nervous energy when delivering an oral argument before the judge, and the dread of reading the inevitably negative headlines the following day are all part of the experience. But it seems that the commissions’ proceedings are merely a sideshow in this carnival-like atmosphere. As famously described by Binyam Mohammed at his arraignment in 2005, the second iteration of the military commissions were simply the “same circus, different clowns.”
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Keith Petty holds an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center; a J.D. from Case Western Reserve University, School of Law; and a B.A. from Indiana University. He is currently serving in the US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps as a prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions. He previously served for one year in Baghdad, Iraq as a Brigade Judge Advocate, advising combatant commanders and soldiers on the law of war, and working closely with local government officials in anticipation of Iraq’s first free elections. He is a former assistant professor of the War Crimes Prosecution Lab, Case Western Reserve University, School of Law; and also worked in the Trial Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The opinions expressed in this Encounter are his own.
"This version has been corrected and was re-posted on June 11, 2008."
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