Morris Davis

Colonel Morris D. Davis (born July 31, 1958) is a United States Air Force officer and lawyer, was appointed to serve as the third Chief Prosecutor of the Guantanamo military commissions., September 2005 until October 2007. He resigned from the position due to objecting to the appointment of William J. Haynes, II, former General Counsel of the Department of Defense, as Presiding Officer of the commissions. He retired from active duty in October 2008.

Awards
Davis has received the following awards and recognition.
 * Outstanding Judge Advocate for Headquarters Air Force in 1990.
 * Meritorious Service Medal with four oak leaf clusters
 * Air Force Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters
 * Air Force Achievement Medal with one oak leaf cluster
 * Southwest Asia Service Medal

Guantanamo service
Unlike his predecessors, Fred Borch and Robert L. Swann, Davis has been a visible public figure. His statements have triggered controversy.

Questionable claims
A National Post article published January 10, 2006 contained extensive quotes from Davis's arguments before the commission, including one in which Davis said: "Thanks to the American medics who stepped over their dead friend and tended to Mr. Khadr, he's alive today," SFC Christopher Speer, a Special Forces medic, was fatally wounded along with two coalition forces, and multiple U.S. forces were wounded and evacuated as a result of the firefight in which Omar Khadr was captured. Though medics did not step over Speer's body to tend to Khadr's wounds, two dead coalition forces lay nearby as Khadr was receiving treatment and evacuation. SFC Speer was evacuated from the scene and died in a hospital ten days after the firefight.

Davis asserted that Sergeant Layne Morris was wounded by the same grenade that mortally wounded Speer. But at least one newspaper account described Morris being wounded prior to the aerial bombardment, and evacuated four hours prior to Speer's wounding.

Comments on the character of the suspects and their attorneys
Khadr's attorney, Muneer Ahmad of American University, accused Colonel Davis of ethical misconduct for referring to Khadr as a "terrorist" and a "murderer" during the January 10, 2006 press conference. Ahmad asked the Presiding Officer to sanction Colonel Davis for the comments, but the presiding officer found the comments were fair and balanced, given the repeated negative out of court statements Ahmad had made for months prior to the hearing. When asked why the prosecution had finally broken its silence, Davis said:

On February 28, 2006 Davis spoke out again regarding the commissions, saying: As Candace Gorman, a defense attorney representing a Guantanamo detainee, noted, this was an odd statement from Davis since it was the military's fault that so few cases had come to trial before the military commissions. By early 2007, only David Hicks, an Australian citizen, was being tried, and all but one of the charges against him had been dropped before trial for lack of evidence.

In March 2007 Davis challenged Major Michael Mori, the military defense counsel assigned to Hicks' case, by threatening him with prosecution for violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He claimed that Mori had acted improperly in criticizing the military commissions while in Australia gathering evidence for the defense. Mori responded angrily, "Are they trying to intimidate me?"

Col. Dwight Sullivan, the Chief Defense Counsel for the military commissions, said that Major Mori’s behavior as defense counsel was “absolutely proper.” He said that, “a military defense lawyer is supposed to provide the same level of representation as a civilian lawyer.” He said that in pressing Mr. Hicks’s case in Australia, “Major Mori is fulfilling his duty as an officer and as an attorney.”

"The Guantánamo I Know"
On June 26, 2007 an op-ed by Davis, entitled "The Guantanamo I know", was published in the New York Times. In it, Davis argued that the Guantánamo Bay detention center is humane, professional, and operating in compliance with international law.

Supreme court to hear challenges to the Military Commissions Act
Congress authorized the military commission system under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, to create an alternative to the existing federal and military system. It restricted detainees as enemy combatants and those whose review was pending, to the military commission process; it prohibited their use of federal courts. The government stayed pending writs of habeas corpus.

On June 29, 2007 the Supreme Court agreed to hear some outstanding claims of habeas corpus., opening up the possibility that they might overturn some or all of the Military Commissions Act.

Davis called the Supreme Court's intention to review the MCA "meddling":

Resignation as Chief Prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay
In October 2007 Colonel Davis resigned from his position as Chief Prosecutor. He had made the policy that evidence obtained from the use of waterboarding, which he considered torture, would not be admissible as evidence in the military commissions. By this time, charges were being developed against high-value detainees, some of whom had been waterboarded in the custody of the CIA. Davis was overruled in his policy by his superiors, including William J. Haynes, II, the General Counsel for the Department of Defense.

Davis resigned in protest and transferred to become the Head of the Air Force Judiciary, stating, "The guy who said waterboarding is A-okay I was not going to take orders from. I quit." He also charged that there was meddling from the Pentagon in cases, and claimed this presented serious conflicts of interest.

Davis said he was denied an end-of-tour medal for his two years at Guantanamo because he resigned and later spoke out about problems in the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions. Davis stated about the medal denial, "I tell the truth, and I get labeled as having served dishonorably. I'm very concerned about the chilling effect . . . on the process". Since his resignation, Davis has frequently spoken out against the Commissions.

In 2008 Davis was called by the defense to testify in the military commission of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver, where he repeated his accusations of political interference. He said Pentagon interest in the progress of trials of detainees greatly increased after September 2006, when high-value detainees were transferred from the CIA to Guantanamo.

Post-military career
Davis was named the head of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service in December 2008; and was fired from this job in late November or early December 2009. This occurred because of an op-ed Davis wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Davis criticized a preliminary report from the inter-agency review team, which proposed using federal courts for trials of some detainees and military commissions for trials of others. He felt they needed to be treated consistently.

Davis wrote: "The administration must choose. Either federal courts or military commissions, but not both, for the detainees that deserve to be prosecuted and punished for their past conduct."

Video

 * Morris Davis interview from Democracy Now!, July 16, 2008