Stafford-Smith makes for a very interesting and entertaining interview subject, and gives a rare personal perspective as a legal advocate for death-row inmates and terrorism suspects.

He gives a clear and honest account of his own experiences with the U.S. legal system and the complications in attempting to provide legal assistance to inmates in Guantanamo, ranging from having to determine the identities of the 700 inmates, to identifying and soliciting their relatives' permission individually in the Middle East for legal counsel to be granted. Censorship and the use of euphemisms for torture further complicate and distort fair applications of the rule of law.

Stafford-Smith also highlights the problem of rewarding "snitching" by pecuniary means and raises important questions surrounding U.S. domestic policy for inmates on death row and its relationship with U.S. legal policy for "illegal enemy combatants."

The problems of the domestic U.S. judicial process are perhaps best illustrated in the case of Herrera v. Collins (Supreme Court, 1993), whereby new evidence supporting an individual's innocence is irrelevant in the execution of the death penalty.

I found the interview to be very informative, and that it provided an integrated framework within which U.S. domestic and foreign policy and the debate between human rights and security could be contextualized.