Based on similarities between the current treatment of detainees and African Americans in the Deep South, the constitutional standards established by the Supreme Court are germane regarding the current armed conflict short of war. The starting point is the “Bram-Brown” progeny, which examines the Supreme Court's extension of constitutional protections in response to interrogations of African American suspects imprisoned in the Deep South. Those detained by law enforcement officials were predominately poor, illiterate African Americans subjected to threats, cumulative mistreatment, and additional interrogation methods that violated Constitutional safeguards. Such treatment continued until the Supreme Court mandated the extension of Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections to this previously unprotected class. Similarly, the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are typically poor, do not speak the language of their surroundings, have little or no access to attorneys, and are subject to threats and abuses from detaining authorities.
Keywords: lynching, Wickersham Commission, Bram v. United States, Brown v. Mississippi, prisoner abuse, Supreme Court, Geneva Convention, totality of the circumstances, Ashcraft v Tennessee, White v. Texas,