A quick note on Padilla

The Padilla case contains many outrageous details. The one I find most intriguing concerned the so-called Al Qaeda terrorist training "application form":

A covert CIA officer -- who testified in disguise at Padilla's trial -- said he was given the form in Afghanistan, and a fingerprint expert found Padilla's prints on the form, prosecutors said.

"The al Qaeda application virtually sealed his fate," said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School. He compared the document's value as evidence to "putting a duffle bag with severed heads on the table."

But Michael Caruso, Padilla's defense attorney, said the prints on the form were not consistent with someone who filled out the document.

"Jose at some point handled the document, but did not fill out the form," Caruso said.

Tricking a mentally incapacitated man into handling a document doesn't strike me as a difficult task. Even so, I believe that there are ways to transfer a fingerprint onto a page without direct contact.

In an earlier post, I argued that Padilla -- a gang member doing time for a murder committed as a juvenile -- made a deal in which he was agreed to do undercover work in exchange for being allowed to go free. I am hardly the only person to consider this theory, which would go some ways toward explaining the government's fixation on this man.