Enough of the hype -- Why Khalid Sheikh Mohammed must be tried in New York (or Virginia, Pennsylvania, or Washington DC)

After Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate race by hyping a false national security issue -- whether terrorists arrested in the US with their pants on fire should receive the Miranda warnings (answer: yes, after they get debriefed under the "public safety" exception to the rule of Miranda v. Arizona), members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, Mayor Bloomberg of New York , and various New York civic associations have reopened the issue of where the trial of the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks should be tried. This is truly unfortunate.

We Americans justlly pride ourselves on our venerable Constitution. Adopted in 1787, it has stood the test of time. The preamble to the Constitution announces that among its purposes is to "establish Justice." Establishing Justice even comes before "insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence." The American colonists had suffered at the hands of a monarchy that did not shrink from hauling colonists across the sea to be tried for offenses before strangers on foreign shores, The Declaration of Independence, chastized the King for "transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses." In Article III, Section 3, clause 2, the framers enshrined the right to be tried by a jury drawn from the vicinity where the crime occurred. It says that in America, one must be tried ". . . in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed in any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed"

The controversy will require the Justice Department to research the right of a defendant to be tried in the place where the crime occurred -- in this instance, it is either New York City or Arlington, Virginia. or near the resting place of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. Being somewhat expansive, since the target of Flight 93 was the US Capitol, the case could be brought in the US District Court in Washington, D.C.

The right to be tried in the federal district where the crime occurred is a right of Constitutional dimensions. No prosecutor wants to give the defense side a sure-fire basis for appeal before the case even starts. While the pressure to move the trial is substantial, the Justice Department should have the last word on this question. It is simply not a political issue.