(03-22-2020, 02:25 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(03-22-2020, 01:12 PM)mikesez Wrote: The rights of the defendant, and the desires of the government, indeed conflict.  The Justice department does not focus on national defense or spies. The Pentagon does not focus on punishing guilty people. But from a whole government perspective, national defense is more important than justice.  

As I've already said, these people were almost certainly guilty, but impossible to prosecute, and I am still surprised I got this far.

Regarding the part in bold.  Is it?  Who determines that and/or where is it written in our laws?

You flip and flop more than the fish that I caught today.

congratulations on catching the fish. I haven't gotten a chance to do that in a while.
I don't think I'm flip-flopping here, but I probably am not communicating well, and you are probably coming at each of my statements with some sort of presumption that I don't share.
To answer your question, no this is not written in our laws. It would be up to the president or the chief of staff to decide. But the principle that national defense is more important than criminal justice applies generally. A hypothetical scenario:
If there is a foreign army rolling tanks a few blocks away, I'm going to have a hard time caring whether the guy down the street gets punished for murdering his wife. Maybe we could run a murder trial in those circumstances, but it certainly would not be a priority. Don't you agree?

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