Julian Assange will not face a fair trial in the US

The argument

Given the nature of his crimes, Assange would be unlikely to receive a fair trial in the US legal system. The US government appoints the country's judges, and the government was on the receiving end of Assange's leaks. It would be impossible for him to receive fair and impartial treatment in the US judiciary. The structural objection is that the institution asked to adjudicate is not independent of the party with the grievance: the same government harmed by the disclosures selects the people who will decide whether making them was a crime. A US judge would be able to seal evidence and restrict the defence team's access to government documents. Those powers bear directly on whether a defence is possible at all. Where the case concerns what was disclosed and why it was disclosed, the documents in question are the evidence, so a ruling that withholds them from the defence does not merely inconvenience it but removes the material the defence would have to work from. It could even meet in private with the prosecution team, as occurred in the high-profile case of whistleblower John Kiriakou when he was accused of espionage after revealing details of the US government's illegal use of torture. That precedent is offered to show the concern is not hypothetical, the procedure having already been used in a comparable prosecution. The Eastern District of Virginia is known as the 'Espionage court' and illustrates how weighted the US legal system is against whistleblowers and those accused of exposing national security secrets. No national security defendant has ever won a case there. The record is what gives the argument its force, because an outcome that has never once gone the other way is difficult to attribute to the individual merits of each case. On this account the venue settles the result before the evidence is heard, and extradition would therefore deliver Assange not to a trial but to its conclusion.

Context

Under the ECHR, any European country facing an extradition request is obliged to consider the individual’s ability to receive a fair trial in the country. Assange's case is inherently political. This could result in an unfair trial, in which case, the UK should not extradite Assange.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The right to a fair trial in all civil and criminal proceedings that take place on US soil is enshrined in the US Fourteenth Amendment in the Constitution. The US Justice System also meets the international requirements for an independent and impartial judiciary as laid out in article 14 of the OHCHR. The UK, therefore, would have no legal grounds to reject the United States' extradition request over concerns that Assange would not receive a fair trial in the US legal system.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Assange would receive a fair trial.