Articles Posted in Worth the Read

The problem is that the CCA’s don’t do that enough. But at least they have the power. In United States v. Quick: The underlying issue is whether Article 66(d), UCMJ, authorizes the CCAs to order sentence-only rehearings. The government argues that the CCAs do not have that authority and asks that we overrule this court’s…

Sixty years after Congress created the UCMJ to protect accused servicemembers from abusive and arbitrary punishment, a significant faction in Congress now believes it must be almost completely dismantled and restructured because is is not being used aggressively enough. Multiple federal organizations and a fair number of outside parties consider the notion of due process…

There are some interesting articles for military justice practitioners in the Summer 2015, MLR. Barracks, Dormitories, and Capitol Hill: Finding Justice in the Divergent Politics of Military and College Sexual Assault  3. By Major Robert E. Murdough.pdf Rudderless: 15 Years and Still Little Direction on the Boundaries of Military Rule of Evidence 513 4. By…

New Developments in Criminal Law: Child Pornography and Appellate Review, by MAJ Jeremy Stephens. THE ABUSE OF DISCRETION STANDARD OF REVIEW IN MILITARY JUSTICE APPEALS, by COLONEL JEREMY STONE WEBER.

A former client directed me to the Air Force Reporter, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2015). In reading about an aspect of his case, my eyes rolled down to this. It is on page 50. CASE 2 Prior to a court-martial, a Special Victims’ Counsel (SVC) advised a client that the SVC would not be attending…

The Washington Post has a report today: The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000. Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s…

A couple of items have come across the transom today which are worth the read to military practitioners. James E. Baker, Is Military Justice Sentencing on the March? Should it be? And if so, Where should it Head? Court-Martial Sentencing Process, Practice, and Issues, Fed. Sentencing Rep. Dec. 2014, at 72-87. This items comes from…

Military law and practice requires that any pretrial agreement discussions be conducted between the defense, the prosecutors, and the convening authority. The military judge is not allowed to be involved. The military judge’s involvement is during trial when she reviews a PTA with the accused to ensure it is all transparent and that it’s terms…

“[W]e recognize that electronic communications are susceptible to fabrication and manipulation.” Campbell v. State, 382 S.W.3d 545, 550 (Tex. App. 2012). Campbell and a number of other state and federal cases were support for my objection to text messages in a case this week. I had a 120 which as usual had text messages as…

In Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, by Ray Raphael, one of his issues of inaccurate historical reporting is about Paul Revere. The book is incisive, well-written, and well worth the read. So it is in this context that I mention Michael Greenberg’s, The Court-Martial of Paul Revere: A Son of Liberty and…