What Does the Hamdan Verdict Mean?

Today a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay delivered a verdict in the case of Salim Hamdan, who was Osama Bin Laden's driver. The tribunal delivered a split verdict, finding him guilty of providing material support to terrorists, but acquitted of conspiring to participate in terrorism. Under the rules of the tribunal, there will be an automatic appeal.

The question is: what does all this mean? Prior to the verdict, defense lawyers said that a guilty verdict was inevitable based on the way that the tribunal was set up. Hamdan was tried before a military judge with a jury of military officers and was defended by military lawyers. The judge excluded some evidence obtained through coercion, but allowed other statements in. The military defense lawyers appear to have waged an aggressive defense going so far as to challenge the very legality of the military tribunal.

Despite the flaws in the system, the verdict may be defensible. At the time that he was detained, Hamdan was driving a vehicle carrying missiles. As long as he knew what his cargo was, this could have been sufficient to sustain a conviction for providing material support to terrorists. Thus, the question will be whether the process was so tainted that the verdict should be thrown out regardless of its reasonableness.

Hamdan's case has already been up to the Supreme Court once and it may go there again. In this case, the highest sentence possible was life in prison. In later trials, the death penalty will be an option. The Hamdan case will likely set the stage for whether future cases will be legitimate or not.