The Blog of Legal Times, 6 February 2009, has this entry: A seventh suspect was arrested and charged today for the murder of Juwan Johnson, the U.S. Army sergeant who was beaten to death by other soldiers during a 2005 gang initiation. Rico Rodrigues Williams, a 31-year-old former Air Force member, was arrested in Chesapeake,…
Continue reading ›Lisa Demer, High court to hear Alaska man’s DNA appeal, Anchorage Daily News, 7 February 2009. Osborne was born and raised in South Carolina, graduated high school there. He said he was accepted into The Citadel but it was too expensive, so he joined the Army. SCOTUSWiki has the various documents relevant to District Attorney’s…
Continue reading ›Not good? Is that the bottom line coming out of appellate results proffered by CAAFLog, Appellate Relief Data (8 February 2009)? CAAFLog’s own “research” of Air Force opinions yields an approximate 4.7% chance of getting relief, and an undetermined chance of meaningful relief within that number of cases. CAAFLog also points to Major Jeffrey D.…
Continue reading ›Check out, Island Justice: Guam Supreme Court Opinion Reveals Important Hearsay & Confrontation Clause Principles, Professor Colin Miller, Evidence Prof Blog, 7 February 2009. They discuss an interesting case of an assault victim. It was six days before police could interview her, and she was interviewed a second time after that. The police office was…
Continue reading ›The Reporter, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Fall 2008) has a couple of articles worth reading. Major Jefferson McBride, CONFRONTATION CLAUSE: The Way Ahead with Remote Testimony, p. 20. Major Thomas Dukes, EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY? A Brief History, Including [United States v.] Long, [United States v. ] Larson, and DOD’s New Computer Use Policy, p.22. For…
Continue reading ›Solomon Moore, Science Found Wanting in Nation’s Crime Labs, N.Y. Times, 4 February 2009. John Eligon, New Efforts Focus on Exonerating Prisoners in Cases Without DNA Evidence, N.Y. Times, 7 February 2009. Criminal justice experts say exonerations have shed light on two circumstances once thought to be extremely rare or even inconceivable: Witnesses are sometimes…
Continue reading ›Do you ever get the client or family member who want to sue NCIS, OSI, CID, CGIS, for what they did in an interrogation. Barring application of Feres (ha, some English major has to find something wrong with that). Check out Smith v. Campbell, et. al., 295 Fed. Appx. 314, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 19085…
Continue reading ›C.A.A.F. has DNA on its conference agenda. In a post-conviction access to DNA evidence case: The district court found that Bradley had a constitutionally protected interest in his life but that the due process protection of that interest was diminished by his conviction. United States v. King, No. 07-12073, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 2056 (11th…
Continue reading ›NACDL has an interesting News Release, Civil Liberties, Religious Groups Seek to Require Warrants for Police GPS Surveillance. A diverse group of civil liberties and religious organizations this week weighed in on the question of whether police need a warrant in order to conduct surveillance of personal vehicles by secretly attaching global positioning satellite (GPS)…
Continue reading ›Dr. Karen Franklin is one of many reporting the results of a survey in New Jersey on the effectiveness of Megan’s law. Karen Franklin, Megan’s Law: Millions for Nothing, 5 February 2009. Bottom line: Despite their enormous popularity, little research has been conducted into whether they work. Now, a federally funded study (submitted December 2008)…
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