Prosecutors drop the confession a judge ruled coerced, keep the trial date they built around it.

…(cont) Here's what careful looks like: in 2007, FBI agents obtained a confession. Mohammed spoke at length, admitting to planning the attacks, and that confession anchored the government's case for nineteen years — right up until Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, the military judge running the commission at Guantanamo Bay, ruled this past week that the statements were involuntary. Coerced. Not admissible.

I want to be clear that this doesn't reflect on whether the confession was true, only on how it was obtained. That's an important distinction, and I will keep repeating it until it sounds like one.

The government did not appeal Judge Schrama's ruling. Prosecutors are proceeding to the June 2028 trial without the confession they spent nineteen years building the case around, because appealing would mean more hearings, and more hearings would mean — I was going to say "delay," but the case has already run twenty-three years without a verdict, so I'm not sure what additional delay even measures against at this point. There's no clock left to lose time on.

What we have is a trial date, set August 27th for June 2028, twenty-five years after the attacks CBS is airing a documentary about this Friday — featuring the same FBI agents whose interview the judge just threw out. Charged in 2008. In custody since 2003. Confessed, we now say involuntarily, in 2007. The commission produced a confession it now says shouldn't count, held the man through it anyway, and calls the date on the calendar progress.

I understand why that sounds bad. I'm telling you it's due process. I'm also telling myself that, increasingly, without success.