Court-Martial Trial Practice

Navy Times reports: The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is back in place for the time being, with one major caveat: the government is not allowed to investigate, penalize or discharge anyone who is openly gay. A San Francisco federal appeals court ordered the military to temporarily continue the controversial policy in an order…

Navy Times reports: Should a service member convicted and sentenced in civilian court be tried on the same charges at court-martial? In a couple of weeks, Rodney Williams will find out. It’s not double jeopardy; at court-martial, Chief Information Systems Technician (SW) Rodney Williams would face federal rather than state charges. But the Navy, dissatisfied…

Politico reports: The commander of the Marine base where Wikileaks suspect Pvt. Bradley Manning was jailed for nearly 10 months ordered an inquiry into his treatment and then overruled one of the investigator’s findings, Marine Corps documents obtained by POLITICO show.

There’s an interesting piece on Salon about how the Manning “story” got uncovered and . . . The piece is actually about the ethics of some of the reporting about the case, in particular by Wired, and some effort to deconstruct the case against Manning. Here is an interesting tidbit that apparently has not been…

Thanks to HowAppealing, there is an interesting Fourth Circuit case involving whether: military colleagues violated Army National Guard colonel’s Fourth Amendment rights by intercepting, reading, and forwarding his e-mails while he was deployed in Kuwait.

Navy Times reports: The executive officer of the amphibious transport dock Green Bay, currently on deployment and operating in the Arabian Sea, was fired Wednesday after being accused of misconduct, the Navy said. Look’s like he got Mast first.

Political Wires reports: A federal judge has said that “injustice” was done to a former Navy officer who was wrongly convicted with the help of a discredited military lab analyst, but he also concluded that the court can’t do anything about it. House had been a highly regarded officer, tapped as executive assistant to the…

Stars & Stripes reports: The number of reports of family violence within the military, which had been in decline over several years, has been rising over the last two years, and reports of abused children and spouses increased significantly last year, a report by the Defense Department’s Family Advocacy Program shows. But what it means…

Here, courtesy of the great Professor Berman, is a case from Ohio, ruling that a state sex-offender registration law intended to comply with SORNA is unconstitutional under the state constitution. In a ruling with potential national implications even though based only on state law, the Ohio Supreme Court this morning in a 5-2 opinion decided…

The Confrontation Clause states that In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to be confronted with the witnesses against him… But does the Confrontation Clause cover only analytical and conclusory statements, or does it also cover “routine and descriptive and objectively ascertained and reliable facts?” According to a Maryland trial court, it only…