My name is Frank Garrett and I am a third-year law student at Indiana University, Robert H. McKinney School of Law. I leave tomorrow morning for Fort Meade, Maryland to attend the 9-11 hearings next week. This will be my first act as a member of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba U.S. Military Commission Observation Project (“MCOP”).

I’m attending the hearings in order to help ensure that the 9-11 defendants get a fair trial. In my initial post, I’d like to explain why that’s important to me.

My interest in the MCOP stems from reading Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008) in a Federal Courts class last spring. In Boumediene, the Supreme Court held a provision of the Military Commissions Act that stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to hear the habeas corpus petitions of Gitmo detainees unconstitutional. The government argued that the Constitution did not apply at Gitmo, or at least not to non-citizens, because the United States technically did not have sovereignty over Gitmo. When Cuba and the United States entered into a lease agreement in 1903, Cuba retained ultimate sovereignty over Gitmo. However, the United States has had complete  control over Gitmo for over 100 years.  In other words, the government argued in Boumediene that because the United (more…)