Court-Martial Trial Practice

Sad, but not unusual, from The False Rape Society. My story started last summer when we got back from Iraq. My best friend and I went to a night club and long story short I had sex with a woman. This woman was a female soldier and ended up being late to work the next…

Gianneli on the Unreliability of Microscopic Hair Analysis Paul C. Giannelli (Case Western Reserve University School of Law) has posted Microscopic Hair Comparisons: A Cautionary Tale on SSRN. Here is the abstract: According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Report on forensic science, “testimony linking microscopic hair analysis with particular defendants is highly unreliable.”…

I posted on Hennis just the other day in terms of one reporters view of the weight of the evidence. Crime & Consequences picks up on a point. Myron Pitts, who covered the Hennis trial for the Fayetteville Observer, has this article summing up the evidence. The whole story is worth a read, but my…

SCOTUSBlog has a podcast of today’s oral argument.

Here at truthout is a different perspective on the rapper case. According to Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist, an Oakland-based organization dedicated to supporting military objectors like Hall, he was not jailed for the song, but was instead jailed “in retaliation for his formal complaint of inadequate mental health services available to him at…

SCOTUSBlog reports that: At about 11 a.m. Monday, the Supreme Court will hear one hour of oral argument in City of Ontario, et al., v. Quon, et al. (08-1332). Arguing for the California city and its police department will be Kent L. Richland of Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland in Los Angeles. The federal government,…

Here is another viewpoint, from a civilian, about the need to court-martial LTC Lakin. The (Greeley, CO) Tribune opinion says: When you become a soldier of the United States of America, you lose some of your rights. Except in extreme cases, you no longer have the right to refuse orders of superiors. You don’t have…

I expect we’ll see several commentary’s about the Hennis trial. Here is one from Myron Pitts, FayObserver.com, which he calls, “Evidence adds up in support of Hennis verdict.” (Along with the article is a great list of links to prior reporting on the case.) I saw a military jury convict Hennis on April 8 and…

Thanks to Professor Colin Miller for this piece. In Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court recently found that certificates of state laboratory analysts are “testimonial” and thus covered by the Confrontation Clause. Thus, if the forensic analysts (or similar experts) who prepared such certificates (or similar documents) do not testify at a criminal defendant’s trial,…