Carlos Warner, assistant federal public defender, will address “The Prison at Guantanamo Bay and America’s ‘Commitment to Justice'” Monday, Feb. 9, at 4:15 p.m. in Tinkham Veale University Center, Ballroom A.
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama proclaimed that, “As Americans, we have a profound commitment to justice—so it makes no sense to spend $3 million per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit.” He added that he had worked “to cut the population of GTMO in half… and I will not relent in my determination to shut it down. It’s not who we are.”
Meanwhile, leading Republican senators have proposed legislation to force Obama to keep the remaining prisoners there. This could be viewed as a clash between Congress and the president, or some Democrats and almost all Republicans. But amid that conflict in Washington, there’s also the need to understand what happens in the prison at Guantanamo Bay itself. How is the prison run?
In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners had access to the federal courts to challenge their confinement. That means they have access to public defenders. How real is that right, and what do public defenders find when they try to represent these clients?
Join Warner to learn exactly that.