Criminal Procedure
Terrorist suspects are considered to have committed grave crimes, especially when it involves mass killing of people and therefore there exists a notion that since they have killed people, they should also be killed. In most cases, individuals involved in terrorist’s activities are not citizens of the United States. This questions the legal authority of the Constitution in applying laws on non-citizens.
The constitution of the United States applies to all individuals including terrorists and since the Bill of Rights is one of the key components of the Constitution, it also applies to all suspected terrorists (Clapham, 2015). The Fifth Amendment of the Unites States Constitution specifies the conditions to be followed when the due process of the law is being followed in any criminal investigation. The Fourteenth Amendment follows up and states that no states is supposed to deprive any individual of their rights or personal liberties. Any individual who has been caught by any of the security agencies irrespective of their countries are supposed to follow the due process.
The Bill of Rights should be applied to terrorist’s lies in Guantanamo Bay, even to the terrorists holding facility outside the United States the Constitution of the United States is applied (Samaha, 2012). All terrorists held within the above facility were jailed after the United States judicial system had found them guilty of largely crimes related to terror. In all of the mentioned cases, the Bill of Rights was followed before any individual was sent to jail. This shows that the United States Constitution is applied to all cases within its jurisdiction as long as it is considered as an individual act targeted against the nation.
References
Clapham, A. (2015). Human rights: Avery short introduction. Oxford: OUP Oxford Press.
Samaha, J. (2012). Criminal Procedure (8th ed.). Independence, KY: Wadsworth Publish Cengage.