Court Refuses To Transfer Padilla

Request To Move 'Dirty Bomb' Suspect To Civil Custody Denied

(CBS/AP) 
Luttig said the Supreme Court must sort out Padilla's fate, either by accepting or rejecting an appeal by his lawyers of the appellate court's decision in September that the president has the authority to order his detention indefinitely.

Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the agency is disappointed by the appellate court's decision. She said the government should be able to charge suspected terrorists with crimes, as well as hold them indefinitely as enemy combatants.

"The department is in the process of reviewing the court's order and will continue to consider all options with respect to pursuing the criminal charges as expeditiously as possible," Scolinos said.

Luttig also chastised the administration for failing to explain why it is using a different set of allegations against Padilla and forcing the appeals court to rely on media reports about the government's motivations.

The appellate judge pointed out that anonymous government officials were quoted in news reports saying Padilla was charged in Miami because the administration didn't want the Supreme Court to review the appeals court's September decision.

In a filing with the appeals court, the administration said it was willing to walk away from that ruling — considered a major victory for its legal war on terrorism — to justify its argument before the Supreme Court that Padilla's appeal is now irrelevant.

Luttig said the administration's actions leave the impression that Padilla has been held "by mistake," and that its tactics could prove costly.

"These impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be a substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts, to whom it will one day need to argue again in support of a principle of assertedly like importance and necessity to the one that it seems to abandon today," he wrote.

"While there could be an objective that could command such a price as all of this, it is difficult to imagine what that objective would be."