Court-Martial Trial Practice

FourthAmendment blog reports a new case: Police reports were “deceptive and deficient,” but the court believes officer without a credibility determination: Ties go to the runner, or the government. The court finds the officer deceptive and believes him anyway because of a presumption police officers tell the truth [even when their reports are “deceptive and…

A case pending at the U.S. Supreme Court was recently settled out of court, and the case withdrawn from consideration. It appears that there has been a settlement of $12M, for prosecutorial misconduct. “This means prosecutors who step outside their traditional role and who act as investigators (in criminal cases) can still be subject to…

Stars & Stripes reports. The Army recently asked 45 of its soldiers in the highest enlisted rank to retire for substandard performance, past criminal convictions, problems with alcohol, fraternization or sexual harassment in their recent pasts. Of the 45 sergeants major whose records were flagged under the newly reinstituted Qualitative Management Program, 28 complied, putting…

Here’s the scenario: Client is convicted at court-martial. Sentencing is to take place the next day, or a Monday after a Friday conviction. Based on the charges and the evidence there’s a reasonable likelihood the client will get some confinement. The command wants to put the client in pretrial confinement pending sentencing. Can they? 1.…

There are a number of ways denial of counsel of choice can come up, most frequently related to the availability of civilian counsel. Here’s an interesting one. United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006). The opinion is written by Justice Scalia. Here are the important part of the opinion: In sum, the right at…

I was over that the Navy Discharge Review Board the other day. Their workload has increased significantly with the bad economy. They were up from 1400 to 2700 petitioners in 2009 over the prior year. It’s the economy, and it’s stupid to waive an administrative separation board if you are being processed for an OTH,…

United States v. Cowgill. WHETHER THE MILITARY JUDGE ABUSED HER DISCRETION IN DENYING THE DEFENSE MOTION TO SUPPRESS ALL EVIDENCE FROM APPELLANT’S HOME. The two underlying point were: potential erroneous information given for a search warrant (statements were factually incorrect, but believed to be true by the detective at the time), and if there was…

On habeas review of state court convictions, the detective’s trial testimony about the statements of two non-testifying co-actors which implicated the defendant in the shooting and which were used to confront the defendant during his interview violated the Confrontation Clause and constituted plain error, in Ray v. Boatwright, _ F.3d _ (No. 08-2825). Since Crawford…

United States v. Sezginalp: There is an interesting appellate procedural history. The court intially denied various efforts to have a post-trial R.C.M. 706 evaluation. But, the court did sua sponte reconsider the denial and did order a new R.C.M. 706 examination. On 6 January 2010, the ordered R.C.M. 706 evaluation report was released. The evaluation…

The Miami Herald reports that: A South Carolina congressman said Friday that five Muslim soldiers at Fort Jackson, S.C., had been removed from active duty, and four of them discharged from the Army, in connection with an ongoing probe into alleged threats to poison food at the large South Carolina base.