Ricardo M. Urbina

RIP!

Leanrnig a ton from these neat articles.

For "9620" - How lame. Putting a high rating just to counter a valid point. Pathetic.

This isn't a political forum. Re: Guantanimo: He saw the evidence, he ruled on the evidence. I'm posting this rating to bring it back to where it was before two comments (one maximally positive, the other maximally negative) changed his statistics.

Judge Urbina's recent decision to release Guantanamo detainees into the U.S. trumps all the positive things said about him below. I see him as arrogant and defiant of a Bush administration that most of us dislike, and yet his decision inflicts risk and liabilities onto the American public. How thoughtless and ignorant a decision. I only pray it is overruled.

Judge Urbina is to be commended if only for his persistence and hopefully, success, in decreeing habeus corpus rights for some of the Guantánamo detainees. Hopefully his decision will help the US Government out of the ethical quagmire it has been placed in by the Bush administration; unfortunately, the road is still long and tortuous.

Judge Urbina is a judge straight out of central casting (in a good way). He is quiet, refined, asks pointed questions of lawyers without making speeches, and is considerate of the lawyers, jurors, witnesses, and employees in his courtroom. He's not a wise guy, a know-it-all, or a yeller. He makes thoughtful decisions, treats the parties even-handedly, and avoids histrionics, always behaving in that kind of dignified way that makes you want to emulate him. If I had to pick one judge in front of whom I'd like to try a week-long civil trial, I can think of few better judges than this one.