by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
Most pro bono cases don’t involve suing the president of the United States and the secretary of defense or become a part of U.S. history for doing so.
The Jacksonville Bar Association’s Law Day guest speaker talked about a case that did.
Harry Schneider, an attorney with Seattle-based Perkins Coie, spoke to The JBA Thursday at the Hyatt about a pro bono case that changed his life, defending Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden.
Hamdan was detained shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. while he was returning to Kandahar, Afghanistan, after dropping off his wife and children in Pakistan because he feared for their safety after the attacks.
When he was detained, two surface-to-air missiles were found in the trunk of the Toyota Corolla he was driving and he was suspected of transporting them for al-Qaida.
Hamdan was turned over to the U.S. military and was held for more than a year before he was told what he was being charged with.
He had been charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism and providing material support for terrorism. The first, the defense feared, would likely carry a penalty of life in prison.
But the defense team was able to convince a jury that Hamdan was merely a driver and his fourth-grade education hindered him from doing much else.
He was convicted of the lesser charges and was sentenced to serve 66 months in prison, one month more than the time that he had already served. He was transported to the prison in Yemen to serve the final month of his sentence and was released in January of 2008.
“I like to think that he took back with him some difficult and important lessons about the United States and our American Constitutional system of justice,” said Schneider.
“He learned that in America the most unlikely defendant can walk into a federal court, an independent judiciary, and sue the president of the United States and the secretary of defense, and, if the case has merit, can win. He learned that his case was about how we would treat those accused of crimes against the United States in a time of war, as much as it was about his own guilt or innocence,” he said.
“I think that he ultimately learned, after many long years, that in America, or a few hundred miles off American shores, he could get justice in a system that was designed to be a little bit less fair than what we are used to,” said Schneider, referring to the military courts in Guantanamo Bay.
He attributed that result to the dedicated jurors and judge “of uncommon ability” that were involved in the hearings in Cuba.
Schneider focused more on the case then on his involvement with it, but his role mirrored the theme of the 2011 Law Day Celebration, “The Legacy of John Adams: from Boston to Guantanamo.”
The message this year is that justice is supposed to be available to everyone, even people who may not be the most popular in the public eye. John Adams upheld that belief by representing the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre in 1770.
Schneider spoke to the importance of a person’s right to a fair trial rather than to the public opinion of whether or not a person deserved it.
Schneider explained how he was moved by the statement of a Marine who served as a juror during the trial.
“The Marine on the jury said to me the day after the trial, ‘We just heard they may keep him forever. You gotta do something about that. You can’t let them get away with that,’” said Schneider.
“He said, ‘The best thing that can happen here is that he serves the sentence that we saw fit that comports with the crime that he actually committed and he goes back to his family and his fellow countrymen and he tells them that, ultimately, I was treated fairly. That’s the best thing that could happen and that’s the one thing that might ensure that his children don’t grow up to fight my children,’” he said.
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