Swagger suited John Gotti, the mob boss who accented his $2,000 Brioni ensembles with $400 handpainted ties.

My swagger doesn't run to that. If my clothing has any patterns, beverage spills are usually to blame.

Mr. Gotti believed gangsters should keep up appearances. Any made man can walk around in tailored Italian suits. The Dapper Don understood that a silk handkerchief and monogrammed socks make a statement.

Unfortunately for him, they don't provide a defense in court. Even in New York, where sociopathy meets sympathy with the right media spin, a man doesn't get a couture exemption for murder.

Get blood on your shoes, you just get more shoes, the hoodlums believe. But authorities tend to trace the spatters.

When Mr. Gotti died seven years ago, in a Missouri prison hospital and wracked with cancer, he wore taxpayer-purchased attire.

The Reaper waits for no man to look presentable.

If a Godfather needs to present a certain image while standing trial, Americans hold no such hopes for terrorists, now bound for the dock on U.S. soil after years of cooling their heels in Cuba.

Obama administration officials announced this month that the worst of the worst, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the guy who allegedly masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks, would be brought to New York for trial in a civilian court.

The decision shows great confidence in the American rule of law, some said. This nation operates within a structure of constitutional guarantees, no matter the heinous acts of the accused, they insisted.

Others said, "Yikes!"

Opponents of the idea believe bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed onto the island of his most abominable act puts Americans at risk and, under the rules of normal judicial proceedings, threatens to reveal classified information.

Besides, goes the argument, the guy doesn't deserve the same protections afforded the run-of-the-mill crook who demands the cash drawer in a QuikTrip holdup.

Was he read Miranda rights when he entered the lockup at Gitmo? Do officers push his head down when he ducks into the back seat of some transport vehicle?

Setting aside the political, emotional and security strings that hang from this matter, citizens should feel pride that innocent-until-proven-guilty defendants in a mass-murder case get the same civil safeguards as the too-sick-for-society child abusers that seem to proliferate at the Buchanan County Courthouse.

Laws uphold our beliefs, and justice prevails.

We hope.

As another leveler, the mug shot proves bruising without causing constitutional damage. No one since H.I. McDunnough, who met his future wife while being photographed for a police file in "Raising Arizona," has ever been happy as the subject of this art.

Assuming suspected terrorists suffer vanity, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed might prefer an image of himself in full sheik finery. But the mug shot most commonly shown has him looking like a derelict in need of a full-body waxing.

In fact, the picture has much in common with the famous mug shot of actor Nick Nolte as a DUI perp.

Here's justice: There's no swagger among the scruffy.

Ken Newton's column runs on Sunday and Tuesday.