Court-Martial Trial Practice

Recruiters and fake high school graduation and home schooling certificates, and now this: The U.S. Army is investigating soldiers who bought degrees from an illegal diploma mill that was based in Spokane and resulted in prison time for its operators. The Army’s Human Resources Command is using a list of customers of the diploma mill…

Talking to a group of relaxing Soldiers former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld reiterated that you have to go to war in what you’ve got. Military.com, 22 May 2009. “Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage,” Rumsfeld Robert Gates said, adding that Specialist…

Wife Doubts PTSD Bigamy Excuse, Military.com, 22 May 2009. A Missouri woman whose husband was cleared of bigamy said she does not believe his claim that post-traumatic stress disorder made him forget his marriage.

This week my technology item is PhoneTag. PhoneTag is a fee based system to receive voicemails as a written email. While on a business trip to Los Angeles in 2003, James Siminoff was out to dinner with friends. Before they could sit down, William had to sort through a 20 minute backlog of voicemails gathered…

United States v. Crabtree, No. 08-4411, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 10720(4th Cir. May 19, 2009). In a published opinion the Fourth Circuit sides with the majority of federal circuit courts of appeal that there is no government “clean hands” exception to the receipt into evidence of unlawfully taped telephone calls. Daniel Crabtree was sentenced to…

Here is Prof. Colin Miller’s comment on United States v. Yammine, decided by the NMCCA recently. Does Child Pornography=Child Molestation?: Military Court Finds Child Pornography Evidence Was Properly Admitted As Character Evidence

David Kocieniewski, Lawyer’s Ways Spelled Murder, U.S. Is Charging, NY Times, 20 May 2009. He spent a decade as a top prosecutor, trying murder cases in New Jersey, drug cases in federal court and a wide range of offenses in the military justice system. He went on to become one of the state’s most prominent…

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Repeal, Don’t Defend: In today’s WSJ, Brian Hughes, a former Army Ranger twice awarded the Commendation Medal, makes a powerful case for ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Volokh Conspiracy.

Last week saw the exoneration of the 132nd person from death row since 1973. Paul House, who was on death row for 22 years and was scheduled for a new hearing, was exonerated after a DNA test proved he was not the perpetrator of the murder he was convicted of in 1986. Daniel Wade Moore…

CAAF has decided United States v. Collier, __ M.J. ___ (C.A.A.F. 2009). This case presents the question whether the military judge erred in granting the government’s motion in limine prohibiting Appellant’s defense counsel from cross-examining HM2 C, the main Government witness, about an alleged homosexual romantic relationship between her and Appellant and from introducing any…