"Any ordinary suspect would have been indicted long ago,& 8221 a well-known attorney told the Bangkok Post.
The administration should seek a court's approval before killing an American citizen, except in the sort of "hot pursuit" that justifies the police shooting of an ordinary suspect.
Otherwise, he wrote, "segregation would be legal, minimum-wage laws would be unconstitutional and the government could wiretap ordinary criminal suspects without first obtaining warrants".
So ought they, as foreign nationals who have targeted American innocents and interests abroad, be dealt with as ordinary criminal suspects and given the protections of the constitution?
After all, Roberts wrote, "if it were, segregation would be legal, minimum-wage laws would be unconstitutional, and the Government could wiretap ordinary criminal suspects without first obtaining warrants".
Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, objected to the restriction on security grounds, saying that even American citizens arrested inside the United States on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack for Al Qaeda should be held under the laws of war and interrogated without receiving the protections of ordinary criminal suspects, like a Miranda warning of a right to remain silent.
The proposal is part of a larger revision of the criminal procedural code that has in other respects won praise from some legal experts, because it would give many ordinary criminal suspects new legal protections and rein in the ability of the authorities to commit abuses.
Justice Roberts's concurrence correctly, if somewhat defensively, concluded that precedent can occasionally be overturned, otherwise "segregation would be legal, minimum wage laws would be unconstitutional, and the Government could wiretap ordinary criminal suspects without first obtaining warrants".
At present, it remains easier to extradite ordinary individuals suspected of straightforward crimes.
Throughout, the viewer is keenly aware of the special treatment Simpson is being given – treatment that would not be given to any ordinary white suspect – precisely because of who he is.
