Articles Posted in Worth the Read

Something here for the downrange SJA/BJA. You’ll remember this: Joseph Goldstein, U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies, N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2015),http://nyti.ms/1KrOuSM. And perhaps the Soldier trouble for beating up an Afghan. See Kyle Jahner, ‘One of the Best’: Defenders Show Support for Ousted Green Beret, Army Times (Sept.…

Practitioners of military justice have been dealing with change over the last years due primarily to different approaches to sexual assault cases. Friend and colleague Cully Stimson has a published piece from his and his organization’s perspective. Take a look. The 2015 Report of the Military Justice Review Group: Reasonable Next Steps in the Ongoing…

· Police can tell when a suspect is lying · People confess only when they have actually committed the crime they are being charged with · Most judges and jurors fully understand court instructions · Eye-witnesses are always the most reliable source of case-related information · Most mentally ill individuals are violent · All psychopaths…

“If we prioritize conviction rates rather than having just verdicts, and if we vote that way in elections, this problem [of unfair, biased criminal prosecutions] will just continue.” by Todd VanDerWerff on January 11, 2016, Netflix’s Making a Murderer: the directors explain what many have missed about the series. Vox.com, January 11, 2016. Prosecutorial bias…

The interesting case of West v. Rieth, et. al. has come across the transom and it’s worth the read. West alleges that the Federal Defendants, who with one exception were also U.S. Marine Corps service members at all relevant times, conspired to lodge false complaints and accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against him.…

One of the discussions ongoing about military sexual assault cases is the breadth of conduct meant to capture, and potential ambiguities in how the law seeks to define a crime versus boorish or otherwise inappropriate behavior. Here is an interesting piece based on developments in Canada. Implied Consent & Sexual Assault: Introduction, Michael Plaxton, University…

There has been much talk in the military justice community about prosecutor ethics and how they may clash with the commander and Congressional desires to prosecute and convict those accused of sexual assault. It is difficult to decide if pressure (proper or otherwise) leads prosecutors to err, or whether it is inexperience or just a…

Kyndra C. Cleveland , Jodi Quas and Thomas D. Lyon (University of California, Irvine , University of California, Irvine – Department of Criminology, Law and Society and University of Southern California – Gould School of Law) have posted Valence, Implicated Actor, and Children’s Acquiescence to False Suggestions (Forthcoming, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology) on SSRN.…

We are all familiar of Congressional and command efforts to address military sexual assaults. Many of the revisions to the UCMJ and the MCM flowing from these efforts are appropriate, reasonable, or meaningless. However, what does appear consistent is the failure of Congress to recognize that it has a concomitant duty to the accused to…

The Washington Post has an article by Orin Kerr on a report in the New York Times about a bill introduced in Congress to change or clarify the “mens rea” required in federal criminal statutes. I probably should not comment on where the proposal may have come from. It is proposed that: § 11. Default…