United States Fourth Circuit

In a case where military authorities seized an alien lawfully residing in the U.S. more than four years ago and held him without criminal charge or process based on his designation as an "enemy combatant," dismissal of petitioner's habeas petition is reversed as: 1) the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) does not apply and the Court of Appeal has jurisdiction where there has been no determination by the U.S. that the initial detention was proper, as required by the MCA; and 2) the President lacks power to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain petitioner and the evidence offered by the Government does not afford a basis for treating petitioner as an enemy combatant, or as anything other than a civilian.

Appellate Information

• Decided 06/11/2007
• Published 06/11/2007

Judges

• Before WILLIAMS, Chief Judge, and WILKINSON, NIEMEYER, MICHAEL, MOTZ, TRAXLER, KING, GREGORY, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Fourth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• ARGUED:  Jonathan L. Hafetz, Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law, New York, New York, for Appellant.  Gregory George Garre, Deputy Solicitor General, Office of the Solicitor General, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Appellee.   ON BRIEF:  Andrew J. Savage, III, Savage & Savage, P.A., Charleston, South Carolina;  Lawrence S. Lustberg, Mark A. Berman, Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C., Newark, New Jersey, for Appellant.  Paul D. Clement, Solicitor General, Reginald I. Lloyd, United States Attorney, District of South Carolina, Eric D. Miller, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Kevin F. McDonald, Assistant United States Attorney, Claire J. Evans, United States Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Appellate Section, Washington, DC, for Appellee.  Jenny S. Martinez, Stanford, California;  Allison Marston Danner, Nashville, Tennessee;  Valerie M. Wagner, Daniel B. Epstein, Dechert, L.L.P., Palo Alto, California, for Specialists in the Law of War, Amicus Supporting Appellant.  Jonathan M. Freiman, National Litigation Project of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, Yale Law School, New Haven, Connecticut, for Professors of Evidence and Procedure, Amicus Supporting Appellant.  Hope R. Metcalf, Wiggin and Dana, L.L.P., New Haven, Connecticut, for United States Criminal Scholars and Historians, Amicus Supporting Appellant. James C. Schroeder, Gary A. Isaac, Heather M. Lewis, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, L.L.P., Chicago, Illinois, for Former Senior Justice Department Officials, Amicus Supporting Appellant.  Kate Martin, Joseph Onek, Center for National Security Studies, Washington, DC, Paul Smith, Joshua A. Block, Jenner & Block, L.L.P., New York, New York, for Center for National Security Studies, Amicus Supporting Appellant;  Lema Bashir, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Washington, DC, for American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Amicus Supporting Appellant;  Aimee J. Baldillo, Asian American Justice Center, Washington, DC, for Asian-American Justice Center, Amicus Supporting Appellant;  Mary Meg McCarthy, Tara Magner, National Immigrant Justice Center, Chicago, Illinois, for National Immigrant Justice Center, Amicus Supporting Appellant.  Gabor Rona, Hina Shamsi, Human Rights First, New York, New York;  Jennifer Daskal, Human Rights Watch, Washington, DC;  Donald Francis Donovan, Catherine M. Amirfar, Tali Farimah Farhadian, Debevoise & Plimpton, L.L.P., New York, New York, for Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch, Amici Supporting Appellant.  Gerald L. Neuman, Cambridge, Massachusetts;  Harold Hongju Koh, New Haven, Connecticut;  Sarah H. Cleveland, Cambridge, Massachusetts;  Margaret L. Sanner, Reed Smith, L.L.P., Richmond, Virginia, for Professors of Constitutional Law and Federal Jurisdiction, Amicus Supporting Appellant.  Timothy J. Finn, Julia E. McEvoy, Katherine E. Stern, Jones Day, Washington, DC, for National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Amicus Supporting Appellant.  Shankar Narayan, Hate Free Zone, Seattle, Washington, for Hate Free Zone, Amicus Supporting Appellant;  Farhana Khera, Muslim Advocates, Kensington, Maryland, for Muslim Advocates, Amicus Supporting Appellant.  Morton Sklar, Executive Director, Joseph Husty, Legal Intern, World Organization for Human Rights USA, Washington, DC, with the assistance of Law Student Contributors:  Melissa Keyes (U. of CA at Hastings Law School), Charles Wait, Aaron Clark-Rizzio, Kennon Scott, Binish Hasan, Maria Tennyson, Olivia Maginley and Meredith Angelson (New York Univ. Law Sch.), Simon Moshenberg, Jesse Townsend, Stephanie Hays, Sameer Ahmed and Nicholas Pederson (Yale Law School), Matt Sadler (B.C. Law School), for World Organization for Human Rights USA, Amicus Supporting Appellant.  David H. Remes, Enrique Armijo, John F. Coyle, Covington & Burling, L.L.P., Washington, DC, for David M. Brahms, Brigadier General, Donald J. Guter, Rear Admiral, Merrill A. McPeak, Retired General, Amici Supporting Appellant.