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What the Judge Said
By Thinking Man | November 6, 2008
Not quite six years ago, a U.S. Federal Judge named William Young sentenced convicted terrorist Richard Reid to life in prison.
For those of you who don’t remember, Richard Reid was the genius who had plastic explosives built into his shoes and who boarded an airplane with the intent of blowing everything, himself included, to smithereens. In midair he tried to detonate these shoes with matches but was apprehended before the explosives took hold.
Just prior to sentencing, Judge William Young asked Mr. Reid if he had anything to say.
Mr. Reid said yes, he did. He said that he swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and to Islam and to the religion of Allah. He said furthermore that he would not apologize for his actions because, as he told the court, he is at war with this country.
When Reid was finished speaking, Judge Young responded this way:
Mr Richard C. Reid, hearken now to the sentence the Court imposes upon you. On counts 1, 5 and 6, the Court sentences you to life in prison in the custody of the United States Attorney General.
On counts 2, 3, 4 and 7, the Court sentences you to 20 years in prison on each count, the sentence on each count to run consecutively. (That’s 80 years.)
On count 8, the Court sentences you to the mandatory 30 years again, to be served consecutively to the 80 years just imposed. The Court imposes upon you for each of the eight counts a fine of $250,000—that’s an aggregate fine of $2 million.
The Court accepts the government’s recommendation with respect to restitution and orders the restitution in the amount of $298.17 to Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines. The Court imposes upon you an $800 special assessment.
The Court imposes upon you five years supervised release simply because the law requires it. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no further.
This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and just sentence. It is a righteous sentence.
Now let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of you or any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is too much war talk here and I say that to everyone with the utmost respect.
Here in this court, we deal with individuals as individuals and care for individuals as individuals. As human beings, we reach out for justice.
You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether the officers of government do it or your attorney does it, or if you think you are a soldier—you are not. You are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not meet with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.
So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are a big fellow. But you are not that big. You’re no warrior. I’ve known warriors. You are a terrorist. You are a species of criminal that is guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and TV crews were, and he said: ‘You’re not a big deal.’
You are no big deal.
What your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific.What was it that led you here to this courtroom today?
I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what your are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing? And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you, but as I search this entire record, it comes as close to understanding as I know.
It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose.
Here, in this society, the very wind carries freedom. It carries it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely.
It is for freedom’s sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf, have filed appeals, will go on in their representation of you before other judges.
We Americans are all about freedom. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake, though. It is yet true that we will bare any burden; pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. The day after tomorrow, it will be forgotten, but this, however, will long endure.
Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done. The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.
See that flag, Mr. Reid? That’s the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom.
And it always will.
Mr. Custody Officer. Stand him down.
I reproduce that here, over five years after the fact, because it is first of all noble and absolutely true. Let it serve as a reminder of what this country once was, and what it could be again if the principle of individual rights were restored in full.
But I reproduce it also because I’d very much like for you to compare it with Barack Obama’s recent words on the subject of rights and freedom:
“Just because you have an individual right does not mean that state or local government can’t constrain the exercise of that right.”
And:
The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society…. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution … that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change…. I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through courts… The Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day … The Framers had that same blind spot … the fundamental flaw of this country.
That, if you don’t know, is a disgrace.
Stumble it!
Topics: Barack Obama, Individual rights, Judge William Young, Liberty |