Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Military Commissions Col. Robert C. “Rob” Moscati, J.D., will present Shenandoah University’s 2015 Constitution Day Lecture, “The Constitutional Underpinnings of Prosecuting Terrorism Cases Before Military Commissions,” at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17, in Halpin-Harrison Hall, Room 222. The event is free and open to the public.
Col. Moscati is a brilliant litigator and dynamic public speaker who will discuss the place of military commissions within the framework of national security prosecutions. Moscati was selected to serve as the deputy chief prosecutor for the military commissions office in 2014, and is detailed as the lead trial counsel in United States v. Al-Nashiri (USS Cole Bombing, Oct. 2000).
In response to the unprecedented attacks of September 11, 2001, and two Supreme Court decisions limiting the power of the president to initiate military commissions without Congressional authorization, the 2006 and 2009 Military Commissions Acts authorize trials before “military commissions” of people who were members of Al-Qaeda or who engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit acts of international terrorism against the United States.
Military commissions at Guantanamo, Cuba, do not operate according to the same system of justice available to people who are arrested and tried in the United States federal or state courts. Major differences include military “juries,” non-unanimous verdicts, and modified evidentiary rules allowing classified evidence and even certain evidence derived from “coercive” interrogation methods.
Moscati is a graduate of Boston College and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo Law School and was commissioned in the United States Army Judge Advocate’s General Corps (JAG) in 1985. Following his active duty service from 1985 until 1988, Moscati entered the New York Army National Guard while simultaneously serving as an assistant U.S. attorney in Buffalo, New York.
As a federal prosecutor, Moscati prosecuted complex organized crime, narcotics, public corruption, national security and human trafficking cases. In 2009, as a Department of Justice attorney, Moscati served on the Presidential Task Force on Guantanamo, following the Supreme Court case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006).
Moscati also deployed to Tikrit, Iraq, as staff judge advocate for the 42nd Infantry Division in 2004-2005.