The Chosen by Swann Joyce & Swann Alexandra

Author:Swann, Joyce & Swann, Alexandra [Swann, Joyce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Frontier 2000 Media Group
Published: 2012-09-21T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

The day after he filed the suit Julian called Kris and told her that he needed to meet with her.

“So what happens now?” Keith was sitting with Kris in Julian’s office. “I used to work in cable news; it takes years to get cases in front of the Supreme Court. Jeff and Mike don’t have years. From what I hear about these military prisons, they probably don’t have months. If this has to go up the chain of command through all of the lower courts, they won’t still be around by the time it’s over.”

“Keith…” Kris remonstrated.

“I’m not trying to be cruel, Kris, but that’s just how it is.” Keith looked back at Julian and waited for an answer.

“The Supreme Court has what is called ‘original jurisdiction’ to hear a limited number of cases. That means that the Court can choose to hear those cases directly—not in an appellate role but as the original judicial body of authority.”

“Can we do that? Does it apply here?”

“‘Original jurisdiction’ is strictly limited and very rare. It’s pretty much confined to cases involving ambassadors or boundary disputes between states. In the entire history of the Court they have heard only a few hundred cases under original jurisdiction. In what state were you and Michael living at the time of his arrest, Kris?”

“We were living in Nevada.”

“Where was Michael arrested?”

“Nevada,” answered Keith. He had not told Julian that he was there when they were arrested, and he was not planning to, but he could state for a certainty where they had been when it happened.

“So a resident of Nevada was arrested in Nevada under section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. That might have possibilities.”

“Possibilities…how?”

“When Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, and the president signed it into law, a lot of Americans were, understandably, afraid that if they were accused of domestic terrorism, they would be subject to arrest and detention without trial,” Cicchetti explained. “Within a month after the law was signed, a group of civil rights activists had filed a case in federal court against the new law. In May of 2012, a Manhattan Federal Court judge ruled that the indefinite detention provisions violated the Constitution. She issued an injunction against enforcing the law. Later that year, the federal government appealed and when that case went to court in 2013, the federal appeals court overturned the lower justice’s decision and ruled that the federal government could, in fact, detain citizens without trial, which they began doing in early 2014. The plaintiffs appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that case was on the docket when the domestic terror threat occurred which forced the building to close. From that day to this, the Court has not heard any cases.”

“2014?” Kris repeated. “I had no idea they were arresting people back then.”

“It was like everything else. The arrests started out slowly, and they accelerated as resistance broke down. But the case that was pending before the Court has never been withdrawn.

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