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Crime & Consequences blog has this story. The U.S. Supreme Court today took up Garza v. Idaho, No. 17-1026, involving the intersection of two recurring themes: lawyer decisions v. client decisions in the conduct of a case and how to apply rules developed for trials to the context of plea-bargained cases, which most cases are…

From time to time I recommend articles, cases, or books to read that may be of interest and help to practitioners. Here are couple of plays to add to the mix, courtesy of Global Military Justice Reform blog, and I quote. Anthony Thommasini of The New York Timeshas written this strong and quite positive review…

The director of public prosecutions has pledged to apologise over failures in 47 rape and serious sexual offence cases where vital evidence was withheld from defence lawyers. From Juliet Bremner with ITV(UK). On Tuesday, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) revealed that issues with disclosure had been identified in 47 of 3,637 cases in England and…

“of late, an important shift has occurred in the views of state and lower federal courts, which have increasingly found fault with “new-generation” SORN laws, which in many respects are more expansive and onerous than those condoned by the” Supreme Court in Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003) (cleaned up?). In the federal judicial…

(cleaned up) Yes, back in 1976 I got my Bluebook and throughout the three years of law school, it was a regular reference. Ah, but it continues to be a daily tool–for motions, briefs, and such. I fear one day I’ll Bluebook a conversation with a relative or friend in everyday conversation. One of the…

The rule of lenity is something you should have in the toolbox regardless of being a trial or appellate counsel. Intisar A. Rabb, The Appellate Rule of Lenity: Responding to Abbe R. Gluck & Richard A. Posner, Statutory Interpretation on the Bench: A Survey of Forty-Two Judges on the Federal Courts of Appeals. 131 HARV.…

You’ll remember Hills, Hukill, and Guardado. Basically, there are problems when the prosecution tries to invoke MRE 413 or 414 when all of the alleged events are charged. The result has been many cases being dismissed and sent for retrial or alternative actions. But, as reflected below, not all cases have a positive result for…

The author of this article clearly doesn’t understand. THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO THE PENTAGON’S WAR ON SEXUAL ASSAULT: THE MILITARY JUSTICE SYSTEM: A legal principle intended to protect service members after World War II has spawned a dangerous precedent.

Amy Howe, SCOTUSBlog reports on a new decision relevant to military practitioners. Opinion analysis: Justices decline to extend Fourth Amendment’s “automobile exception” When two Virginia police officers searched for the motorcyclist who had eluded them by driving away at speeds of up to 140 miles per hour, they probably would not have imagined that the…

The Supreme Court, however, “has long recognized that the military is, by necessity, a specialized society separate from civilian society” and “that the military has, again by necessity, developed laws and traditions of its own during its long history.” See Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 743, 94 S. Ct. 2547, 2555, 41 L. Ed.…