To the Editor:

Re “2 Groups to Help Defend Detainees at Guantánamo” (news article, April 4):

The military commission system at Guantánamo is stacked against the detainees with the use of “secret evidence, hearsay and evidence obtained through torture.”

The Bush administration created the commissions system precisely because it knows it cannot circumvent American law to use such evidence in our federal courts.

Moreover, the government has shamefully underfinanced and understaffed the military defense counsel it has deployed to represent these men while providing virtually unlimited resources for the military prosecutors.

Indeed, it is great news that the A.C.L.U. and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers plan to join the Center for Constitutional Rights and other attorneys to challenge the military commissions on behalf of the men the government seeks to execute based on what federal law recognizes as unreliable, torture-tainted evidence.

That the government has forced charitable organizations like ours to step in to try to redress some of the imbalance is unconscionable for a nation that prides itself on providing fair trials.

Vincent Warren
Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights
New York, April 7, 2008

Note from KBJ: There are plenty of anti-American law professors out there. Put them to work.