On that whole, "looking forward" thing

[pecunium]

I see a lot of apologists (mostly for torture, but some for things like wiretapping), saying we need to look foreward, not backwards.

One.. huh? Prosecutions have to look bacwards. A crime has to happen before it can be prosecuted.

That's the first oddity. The other one is that I saw, in the dim and distant past of 2008, a lot of people saying, "Well sometimes the law has to be broken. If a cop knows someone has info, and the only way to get it is to torture the guy, then he needs to do it. No jury will convict someone who saves a kid's life by beating up a perp."

This is often followed by a bravura follow-on: "I'd do it if I had to, and I'd turn myself in and face the music."

Ok, lets assume that's true.

Why aren't the people who authorised the tortures saying, "Yeah, I ordred peopel to do it. I had to, it was to save lives. So go ahead, charge me. I'll prove it was needed, and no jury will convict me?"

Comments

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

I don't think a person who's no longer in office can be impeached.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Nope. There is nothing which prohibits it. In part because impeachment is purely related to governance. The penalty for being convicted isn't prison; it's loss of pension, and prohibition from futher office.

The only legal controls on impeachment are here:



US Code TITLE 28 App. FEDERAL ARTICLE Rule 609

Subdivision (b). Few statutes recognize a time limit on impeachment by evidence of conviction. However, practical considerations of fairness and relevancy demand that some boundary be recognized. See Ladd, Credibility Tests—Current Trends, 89 U.Pa.L.Rev. 166, 176–177 (1940). This portion of the rule is derived from the proposal advanced in Recommendation Proposing in Evidence Code, § 788(5), p. 142, Cal.Law Rev.Comm’n (1965), though not adopted. See California Evidence Code § 788.

Note that the boundaries have not been defined.

I point to this article: "...AND STAY OUT!": THE CONSTITUTIONAL CASE FOR POST-PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT

While the ability to hold a "late impeachment" seems fairly clear to me, it is not undisputed. To be sure, the Constitution does not address the issue directly one way or the other. Nevertheless, there is, as professor Michael Gerhardt has put it, a "surprising consensus" among scholars on this issue.

English practice allowed post-term impeachment. Other perceived excesses of the English impeachment system were limited explicitly by the Constitution. Impeachment can only be for high crimes and misdemeanors; punishment cannot include death, as it did in England; a supermajority is required for conviction. The English practice of post-term impeachment, however, was not similarly limited in the Constitution.

There is even precedent for it. Sec. War Belknap was impeached after he resigned.

The Senate tried him, though it fell one vote short of conviction, on all five articles.

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Thanks.