Jose Padilla Verdict: Guilty

Jose Padilla was convicted on all 3 charges today.

I'm unsure about whether this is good, or bad. Jose Padilla was held (and tortured) without trial at Guantanamo Bay. He is a US citizen. Black and white - that was wrong.

Now he's had a trail, though given the mental illness that came as a result of his extended stay at Gitmo, he was unable to competently assist in his own defense.

If the charges are true, and he really was the terrorist that they'd have us believe, the sentence is too short. However, I'm not sure I do believe the stories. For example, the fingerprints they say they have - were "normal" procedures followed, as they would be in a US crime case? There are a million ways that those fingerprints could have made it on the paper. Was the jury sufficiently convinced that there was no doubt that he put them on the paper, or were they a victim of our current "Terror Regime", and had so much prejudice against an accused terrorist that true evidence was unnecessary?

I think he's probably guilty of something, but given the facts surrounding his stay at Gitmo, I don't think Jose Padilla is still the guy in Jose Padilla's body, and his guilt, or lack thereof, nor his punishment, matter much to him. But, it does to me. I'm a US citizen, and I just watched our president trample on our constitution.