John Ashcroft
Petitioner
Neal Kumar Katyal, Acting Solicitor General In 1984, Congress passed the Bail Reform Act, which gave Federal prosecutors the power to arrest and detain individuals whom they considered to be material witnesses to a crime. Although these types of arrests had been available to prosecutors for most of U.S. history, the Bail Reform Act gave them increased power to indefinitely detain those deemed to have information important to a prosecution or grand jury investigation. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the government stepped up the use of detentions for those it believed to be involved in terrorist plots against…
