Prosecuting and Defending "Enemies of the State"

Carole I. McCartney, Northumbria University; University of Leeds, School of Law; Bond University; and Clive Walker, University of Leeds, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, have published Enemies of the State and Miscarriages of Justice at 32 Delhi Law Review 17 (2014). Here is the abstract.

Miscarriages of justice are exceptionally prevalent, acute and most often irredeemable when the subject is ‘an enemy of the state’. Nowadays, these subjects usually take the guise of ‘terrorists’ or other variants of ‘extremists’, and the impacts of the miscarriages upon them can be extreme, including the death penalty. Evidence will be provided for this premise mainly from the United Kingdom, but with further examples from other jurisdictions. Reasons for this correlation will be considered. One response is to demand the observance of fundamental rights within the justice process even in times of crisis and threat. In fact, states frequently adopt processes, which diminish normal safeguards and checks against wrongful conviction in such cases. Therefore, given the predilection of states to dilute due process in terrorist/extremist cases, a more practicable remedy might be to concentrate on post-conviction review mechanisms.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.