Of the various arguments against trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian
court, the worst is that our government's use of waterboarding will be exposed. Indeed, the public's exposure to
"enhanced interrogation techniques" could be one of the beneficial results of his trial.
A public defender writes to tell me:
"I have a colleague with a client who seems patently innocent.
All the forensic evidence is in his favor. The eyewitness evidence is in his favor. But he confessed. His
IQ is in the 50s—he’s quite impaired and the confession doesn’t even make much sense. . . . False confessions happen
for a lot of reasons, not just coercive police tactics. Police and lawyers need to be very attuned to the vulnerabilities
of certain kinds of suspects/defendants, and to certain conditions like sleep deprivation and grief."
