The acts of the Hammonds were reconsidered as terrorism. To me, this is double jeopardy. The original prosecution should have mead the case that the Hammonds acted as terrorists.
They weren't "reconsidered as terrorism." The "original prosecution" made the case for "terrorism" at the initial sentencing hearing.
Here is what happened:
They pleaded guilty mid-trial to committing arson on federal land. The guilty plea included a clause recognizing that the federal government would seek the five-year mandatory minimum under AEDPA (the "terrorism" statute) because the offense conduct involved the wilfull destruction of federal property, etc. The government sought the five year mandatory minimum
at the initial sentencing. The district court agreed that it was applicable on the facts, but applying it in this instance would be a violation of the eighth amendment because five years for arson would be cruel and unusual. The government appealed and the ninth circuit held that five years for arson was not cruel or unusual. The Hammonds appealed and Scotus decided that the appeal lacked merit.
Double jeopardy is danger of being punished twice for the same offense.
Here, they were punished once for the same offense. The dispute was the length of the punishment-they received credit for the time already served.
Additionally, do you think that the Hammonds committed terrorism? If not, then the law is unjust (and needs to be remade), and the pardon is just.
I believe that they did the thing (destruction of federal property via arson to interfere with government processes, etc) that AEDPA has a 5-year mandatory minimum punishment for.
I agree that is not something that we would call "terrorism." I do not think the label is important. Especially because AEDPA was a massive overhaul of sentencing (among other things) and nobody seriously considers all of the cases it affects to be "terrorism" cases, even though it has terrorism in the name. The relevant question is whether they did the thing it labeled or mislabeled.
Let me ask you this:
We agree that punching a stranger and taking his stuff is a crime. Suppose a law was named the "anti-murder act" and inexplicably defined murder, for the purpose of that law, as "punching a stranger and taking his stuff", punishable with 3 years in prison. If someone punched a stranger and stole his stuff, would you find his three-year sentence unjust because he do what we believe to be a murder?
I would appreciate your input on the part that you did not quote from my original post. Here it is again:
The decision by Obama to not prosecute government workers who engaged in torture was unjust, and there are innocent victims, who were killed or harmed (including Americans Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel), of this unjust decision. Trump has compounded this injustice by making one of the workers, who destroyed evidence of torture (not of poaching, of torture!), the director of the CIA.
I ignored it because it's not relevant to the topic except to the extent that it's a perceived injustice by the government. Vance and Ertel (allegedly) were being illicitly detained and tortured outside of the United States and filed habeas petitions. They were unconnected to the Hammonds, who were convicted and imprisoned in the United States, and whose case was on direct appeal.
