Padilla v. Yoo

• Decision Date: 12 June 2009
• Docket Number: No. C 08-00035 JSW.,C 08-00035 JSW.
• Citation: 633 F.Supp.2d 1005
• Parties: Jose PADILLA and Estela Lebron, Plaintiffs, v. John YOO, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California

633 F.Supp.2d 1005

Jose PADILLA and Estela Lebron, Plaintiffs, v. John YOO, Defendant.

No. C 08-00035 JSW.

United States District Court, N.D. California.

June 12, 2009.

As Amended June 18, 2009.

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Hope R. Metcalf, National Litigation Project, Jonathan M. Freiman Tahlia Townsend, Allard K. Lowenstein Clinic at Yale Law School, New Haven, CT, Natalie Laura Bridgeman, Law Offices of Natalie L. Bridgeman, Esq., San Francisco, CA, for Plaintiffs.

Glenn Stewart Greene, Mary H. Mason, Sarah Whitman, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Defendant.

ORDER DENYING IN PART AND GRANTING IN PART DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO DISMISS

JEFFREY S. WHITE, District Judge.

INTRODUCTION

Now before the Court is the motion to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted filed by Defendant John Yoo ("Yoo"). Having carefully reviewed the parties' papers and considered the relevant legal authority, and having had the benefit of oral argument, and good cause appearing, the Court hereby DENIES IN PART and GRANTS IN PART Yoo's motion to dismiss.

[War] will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.

The Federalist No. 8, at 44 (Alexander Hamilton) (E.H. Scott ed., 1898).

The issues raised by this case embody that same tension—between the requirements of war and the defense of the very freedoms that war seeks to protect. After the brutal and unprecedented attacks on this nation on September 11, 2001, the United States government responded to protect its citizens from further terrorist activity. This lawsuit poses the question addressed by our founding fathers about how to strike the proper balance of fighting a war against terror, at home and abroad, and fighting a war using tactics of terror. "Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the Nation during this period of ongoing combat. But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship. It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad." Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 532, 124 S.Ct. 2633, 159 L.Ed.2d 578 (2004); see also Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164-65, 83 S.Ct. 554, 9 L.Ed.2d 644 (1963) ("The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit government action.").

This case also raises the tension of the appropriate roles of the separate branches of government during a crisis of national proportions. The Supreme Court has clearly held that a "state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens." Id. at 535, 124 S.Ct. 2633. Although the courts should defer to the coordinate branches of government with respect to the "core strategic matters of warmaking . . . [w]hatever power the United States Constitution envisions for the Executive in its exchanges with other nations or with enemy organizations in times of conflict, it most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches when individual liberties are at stake." Id. at 535, 537, 124 S.Ct. 2633.

BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Jose Padilla ("Padilla") is a United States citizen who was designated an enemy combatant during the last administration's "war on terror" and who was detained in a military brig in South Carolina for three years and eight months. Padilla alleges that he was imprisoned without charge, without the ability to defend himself, and without the ability to challenge the conditions of his confinement. Padilla also alleges that he has suffered gross physical and psychological abuse upon the orders of high-ranking government officials as part of a systematic program of abusive interrogation which mirror the abuses committed at Guantanamo Bay.

For the purposes of the pending motion to dismiss, the Court accepts as true the following allegations made in the First Amended Complaint. On or about May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested at the Chicago O'Hare International Airport pursuant to a material witness warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. (First Amended Complaint ("FAC") at ¶ 35.) Padilla was transported to New York where he was held in custody in a federal detention facility. (Id.) On June 9, 2002, while a motion was pending to vacate the material witness warrant, President George W. Bush ("President Bush") issued an order that declared Padilla an "enemy combatant" and directed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ("Rumsfeld") to take him into protective custody. The President found that Padilla was closely associated with al Qaeda, was engaged in conduct that constituted hostile and war-like acts, and represented a "continuing, present and grave danger to the national security of the United States, and [therefore] that detention of Mr. Padilla is necessary to prevent him from aiding al Qaeda in its efforts to attack the United States or its armed forces, other governmental personnel, or citizens." (See Letter from President Bush to Rumsfeld (June 9, 2002), reprinted in Padilla v. Hanft, 423 F.3d 386, 389 (4th Cir.2005), cert. denied, 547 U.S. 1062, 126 S.Ct. 1649, 164 L.Ed.2d 409 (2006)) ("Padilla II"); (see also FAC, Ex. J (Executive Order dated June 9, 2002).) That same day, Padilla was taken into custody by Department of Defense officials and transported to the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina. (Padilla v. Hanft, 389 F.Supp.2d 678, 680 (D.S.C.2005), rev'd, 423 F.3d 386 (4th Cir.2005), cert. denied, 547 U.S. 1062, 126 S.Ct. 1649, 164 L.Ed.2d 409 (2006)) ("Padilla I").

Padilla was thereafter detained without being charged, was subjected to extreme isolation, including isolation from both counsel and from his family, and was interrogated under threat of torture, deportation and even death. He was placed in solitary confinement in a tiny cell in an otherwise empty wing of the military brig. Padilla alleges that he was "subjected to a systematic program of unlawful interrogation methods and conditions of confinement, which proximately and foreseeably caused [him] to suffer extreme isolation, sensory deprivation, severe physical pain, sleep deprivation, and profound disruption of his senses, all well beyond the physical and mental discomfort that normally accompanies incarceration." (FAC at ¶ 45.) While he was detained, government officials subjected Padilla to interrogation tactics and policies such as:

(a) extreme and prolonged isolation;

(b) deprivation of light and exposure to prolonged periods of artificial light, sometimes in excess of 24 hours;

(c) extreme and deliberate variations in the temperature of his cell;

(d) sleep adjustment;

(e) threats to subject him to physical abuse resulting in severe physical pain and suffering, or death, including threats to cut him with a knife and pour alcohol into the wounds;

(f) threats to kill him immediately;

(g) threats to transfer him to a location outside of the United States, to a foreign country or Guantanamo, where he was told he would be subjected to far worse treatment, including severe physical and mental pain and suffering;

(h) administering to him or making believe that he was being administered psychotropic drugs against his will;

(i) shackling and manacling for hours at a time;

(j) forcing him into markedly uncomfortable and painful (or "stress") positions;

(k) requiring him to wear earphones and black-out goggles during movement to, from, and within the brig (l) introduction into his cell of noxious fumes that caused pain to the eyes and nose;

(m) lying to him about his location and the identity of his interrogators;

(n) loud noises at all hours of the night, caused by government agents banging on the walls and bars of his cell or opening and shutting the doors to nearby empty cells;

(o) withholding of a mattress, pillow, sheet or blanket, leaving him with nothing to sleep or rest on except a cold steel slab;

(p) forced grooming;

(q) sudden and unexplained suspension of showers;

(r) sudden and unexplained removal of religious items;

(s) constant surveillance, including during the use of toilet facilities and showers;

(t) blackening out of the interior and exterior windows of his cell;

(u) deprivation of access to any form of information about the outside world, including radio, television, and newspapers from the time of his imprisonment in the military brig until summer 2004, at which time he was allowed very limited access to such materials;

(v) denial of sufficient exercise and recreation and, when permitted intermittently, only in a concrete cage and often at night;

(w) denial of any mechanism to tell time in order to ascertain the time for prayer in keeping with the Muslim practice;

(x) denial of access to the Koran for most of his detention; and

(y) complete deprivation or inadequate medical care for serious and potentially life-threatening ailments.

(Id. at ¶ 55, 63-71.)

From June 9, 2002 until March 4, 2004, government officials also denied Padilla all contact with anyone outside the military brig, including his family and legal counsel. (Id. at ¶ 56.) For ten...