Saturday, November 8, 2008

It is a diabolical dodge of the most basic of legal rights to permit prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay to attend their habeas corpus hearings only via "audio link" [news story, Nov. 7]. Habeas rights could not be simpler: Prisoners must be brought into the courthouse, where charges against them are to be read.

In 19th-century Australia, prisoners in offshore penal colonies went to extreme lengths to assert that right. Groups would draw straws: The holder of the long killed the holder of the short. The rest would serve as witnesses in the ensuing trial, which could only take place on the mainland. These men were willing to risk death for that brief glimpse of life outside the jail.

This madness tells us that there is no right more valuable than the right to appear in court when one is accused of a crime.

MATT PETERSON

Princeton, N.J.