Higazy

Jim Henley:

I agree with Kevin Drum. It’s befuddling that the weekend’s news about the Higazy decision and the FBI’s attempt to censor the details of their conduct in the case out of the judges opinion has gone largely unremarked.

Now that I'm reading the story: Holy shit!

Basically, the FBI coerced an innocent man into confessing by threatening his family with torture, eventually the man's innocence became clear and an appeals court ruled in his favor, but the opinion was swiftly pulled off the web. Then up came a new version:

The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is classified. Just as the opinion gets interesting, when we are about to learn how an FBI agent named Templeton squeezed the "truth" out of Higazy, the opinion reads at page 7: "This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."

The new rule of law -- even when your banana republic antics get caught and exposed, you can use the cover of national security secrets to keep the facts obscured. Welcome to America.