Articles Posted in New Cases

United States v. Story. Here the issue is two-fold: what is the response when the members want to call a witness, and what is permissible on appeal to demonstrate prejudice. ACCA found error in the military judge denying the members an opportunity to call a witness. On appeal, ACCA found that documents submitted by appellate…

NMCCA has issued six new decisions, of which four are merits. United States v. Maharrey, post-trial delay case. United States v. Thornton. Appellant raises ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) and sufficiency of the evidence. The findings and sentence are set-aside based on the IAC. The IAC relates to several issues: failure to properly advise on…

ACCA has decided United States v. Kloch. The accused wanted to tell the military judge in his unsworn that several of his co-accused’s had received 15 days confinement at summary court-martial, etc. The MJ would not allow the statement. ACCA found error, but that it was non-prejudicial.

The CGCCA has issued a decision in the court-martial: United States v. Montuoro. A short sweet reminder of sentence comparison issues when there are co-accused’s. Sentence comparison among co-accused’s is a different issue than sentence appropriateness.

All were submitted on their merits. All except one was a straight legal affirmance. In United States v. Carney, the court themselves found two errors that needed to be corrected. The convening authority failed to suspend the bad conduct discharge as agreed in a pretrial agreement, and a multiplicity issue was reviewed for plain error…

All are straight legal denials on the merits.

Jansen. A sentence comparison case among co-accused’s. The case is of note to trial practitioners and SJA’s for it’s “discussion” of what is or isn’t a “closely related” case, and whether sentence disparity should be addressed with the CA post-trial. Principi. A CP case where the prosecution charged for contingencies of proof, the contingency wasn’t…

Here is the footnote that should be of concern to all defense counsel, from United States v. Regaladozambrano, just decided. While the Court has declined to brand Capt [O’s] post-trial legal representation of the appellant as deficient, that restraint is exercised only due to the lack of any evidence of prejudice in the record before…

Five of the new cases are post-trial delay issues. More on the others later.

CAAF has released an opinion in United States v. Bush, __ M.J. ___ (C.A.A.F. 2009). That means, according to CAAFLog, two more to go before of all of the current pending decisions have been released. Judge Erdmann writes the opinion; Judge Ryan writes a “concur in the judgment” opinion which Judge Stuckey is in agreement…