He's Crazy, but We Made Him That Way

Jose Padilla's lawyers have filed a motion to have the court determine whether he is competent to stand trial:

'Jose’s experience as a detainee was so traumatic that it’s physically and mentally painful for him to answer the questions that we put to him,' said Orlando do Campo, a federal public defender in Miami. 'He just shuts down. We’re covering a lot of the same area as his interrogators, and he doesn’t want to relive it.'

In response, the Government agrees that such a determination should be made:

The government itself cited the affidavit of a psychiatrist for the defense, Dr. Angela Hegarty, who said that Mr. Padilla did not understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him and that he suffered 'impairment in reasoning' as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder 'complicated by the effects of prolonged isolation.'

In other words, we made Padilla crazy by locking him away from human contact for the past several years (uncharged, by the way, until recently). One wonders if the Government would be happy to commit Padilla for treatment to make him competent and then continue to argue for the harsh solitary confinement that made him nuts in the first place.