Opinion ID: 104229
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Invalidity of the Commission's Constitution.

Text: The fountainhead of the commission's authority was General MacArthur's directive by which General Styer was ordered to and pursuant to which he did proceed with constituting the commission. [8] The directive was accompanied by elaborate and detailed rules and regulations prescribing the procedure and rules of evidence to be followed, of which for present purposes ง 16, set forth below, [9] is crucial. Section 16, as will be noted, permits reception of documents, reports, affidavits, depositions, diaries, letters, copies of documents or other secondary evidence of their contents, hearsay, opinion evidence and conclusions, in fact of anything which in the commission's opinion would be of assistance in proving or disproving the charge, without any of the usual modes of authentication. A more complete abrogation of customary safeguards relating to the proof, whether in the usual rules of evidence or any reasonable substitute and whether for use in the trial of crime in the civil courts or military tribunals, hardly could have been made. So far as the admissibility and probative value of evidence was concerned, the directive made the commission a law unto itself. It acted accordingly. As against insistent and persistent objection to the reception of all kinds of evidence, oral, documentary and photographic, for nearly every kind of defect under any of the usual prevailing standards for admissibility and probative value, the commission not only consistently ruled against the defense, but repeatedly stated it was bound by the directive to receive the kinds of evidence it specified, [10] reprimanded counsel for continuing to make objection, declined to hear further objections, and in more than one instance during the course of the proceedings reversed its rulings favorable to the defense, where initially it had declined to receive what the prosecution offered. Every conceivable kind of statement, rumor, report, at first, second, third or further hand, written, printed or oral, and one propaganda film were allowed to come in, most of this relating to atrocities committed by troops under petitioner's command throughout the several thousand islands of the Philippine Archipelago during the period of active hostilities covered by the American forces' return to and recapture of the Philippines. [11] The findings reflect the character of the proof and the charge. The statement quoted above [12] gives only a numerical idea of the instances in which ordinary safeguards in reception of written evidence were ignored. In addition to these 423 exhibits, the findings state the commission has heard 286 persons during the course of this trial, most of whom have given eye-witness accounts of what they endured or what they saw. But there is not a suggestion in the findings that petitioner personally participated in, was present at the occurrence of, or ordered any of these incidents, with the exception of the wholly inferential suggestion noted below. Nor is there any express finding that he knew of any one of the incidents in particular or of all taken together. The only inferential findings that he had knowledge, or that the commission so found, are in the statement that the crimes alleged to have been permitted by the Accused in violation of the laws of war may be grouped into three categories set out below, [13] in the further statement that the Prosecution presented evidence to show that the crimes were so extensive and widespread, both as to time and area, [14] that they must either have been wilfully permitted by the Accused, or secretly ordered by him; and in the conclusion of guilt and the sentence. [15] (Emphasis added.) Indeed the commission's ultimate findings [16] draw no express conclusion of knowledge, but state only two things: (1) the fact of widespread atrocities and crimes; (2) that petitioner failed to provide effective control . . . as was required by the circumstances. This vagueness, if not vacuity, in the findings runs throughout the proceedings, from the charge itself through the proof and the findings, to the conclusion. It affects the very gist of the offense, whether that was wilful, informed and intentional omission to restrain and control troops known by petitioner to be committing crimes or was only a negligent failure on his part to discover this and take whatever measures he then could to stop the conduct. Although it is impossible to determine from what is before us whether petitioner in fact has been convicted of one or the other or of both these things, [17] the case has been presented on the former basis and, unless as is noted below there is fatal duplicity, it must be taken that the crime charged and sought to be proved was only the failure, with knowledge, to perform the commander's function of control, although the Court's opinion nowhere expressly declares that knowledge was essential to guilt or necessary to be set forth in the charge. It is in respect to this feature especially, quite apart from the reception of unverified rumor, report, etc., that perhaps the greatest prejudice arose from the admission of untrustworthy, unverified, unauthenticated evidence which could not be probed by cross-examination or other means of testing credibility, probative value or authenticity. Counsel for the defense have informed us in the brief and at the argument that the sole proof of knowledge introduced at the trial was in the form of ex parte affidavits and depositions. Apart from what has been excerpted from the record in the applications and the briefs, and such portions of the record as I have been able to examine, it has been impossible for me fully to verify counsel's statement in this respect. But the Government has not disputed it; and it has maintained that we have no right to examine the record upon any question of evidence. Accordingly, without concession to that view, the statement of counsel is taken for the fact. And in that state of things petitioner has been convicted of a crime in which knowledge is an essential element, with no proof of knowledge other than what would be inadmissible in any other capital case or proceeding under our system, civil or military, and which furthermore Congress has expressly commanded shall not be received in such cases tried by military commissions and other military tribunals. [18] Moreover counsel assert in the brief, and this also is not denied, that the sole proof made of certain of the specifications in the bills of particulars was by ex parte affidavits. It was in relation to this also vital phase of the proof that there occurred one of the commission's reversals of its earlier rulings in favor of the defense, [19] a fact in itself conclusive demonstration of the necessity to the prosecution's case of the prohibited type of evidence and of its prejudicial effects upon the defense. These two basic elements in the proof, namely, proof of knowledge of the crimes and proof of the specifications in the bills, that is, of the atrocities themselves, constitute the most important instances perhaps, if not the most flagrant, [20] of departure not only from the express command of Congress against receiving such proof but from the whole British-American tradition of the common law and the Constitution. Many others occurred, which there is neither time nor space to mention. [21] Petitioner asserts, and there can be no reason to doubt, that by the use of all this forbidden evidence he was deprived of the right of cross-examination and other means to establish the credibility of the deponents or affiants, not to speak of the authors of reports, letters, documents and newspaper articles; of opportunity to determine whether the multitudinous crimes specified in the bills were committed in fact by troops under his command or by naval or air force troops not under his command at the time alleged; to ascertain whether the crimes attested were isolated acts of individual soldiers or were military acts committed by troop units acting under supervision of officers; and, finally, whether in short, there was such a `pattern' of conduct as the prosecution alleged and its whole theory of the crime and the evidence required to be made out. He points out in this connection that the commission based its decision on a finding as to the extent and number of the atrocities and that this of itself establishes the prejudicial effect of the affidavits, etc., and of the denial resulting from their reception of any means of probing the evidence they contained, including all opportunity for cross-examination. Yet it is said there is no sufficient showing of prejudice. The effect could not have been other than highly prejudicial. The matter is not one merely of rules of evidence. It goes, as will appear more fully later, to the basic right of defense, including some fair opportunity to test probative value. Insufficient as this recital is to give a fair impression of what was done, it is enough to show that this was no trial in the traditions of the common law and the Constitution. If the tribunal itself was not strange to them otherwise, it was in its forms and modes of procedure, in the character and substance of the evidence it received, in the denial of all means to the accused and his counsel for testing the evidence, in the brevity and ambiguity of its findings made upon such a mass of material and, as will appear, in the denial of any reasonable opportunity for preparation of the defense. Because this last deprivation not only is important in itself, but is closely related to the departures from all limitations upon the character of and modes of making the proof, it will be considered before turning to the important legal questions relating to whether all these violations of our traditions can be brushed aside as not forbidden by the valid Acts of Congress, treaties and the Constitution, in that order. If all these traditions can be so put away, then indeed will we have entered upon a new but foreboding era of law.