Court-Martial Trial Practice

TheDOD IG Semiannual Report to the Congress has been issued for the reporting period of October 1, 2014, to March 31, 2015 is on line. The report complies with a requirement of the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended. The report is a summary. DoD IG issued 103 reports, identifying $101.1 million in questioned…

6 June is Leg Day for Navy Appellate Defense. Happy leg day all.

United States v. Nettles decided by CAAF today. We granted review to determine whether the Air Force had personal jurisdiction over Appellant at the time of his courtmartial. We hold that it did not, and that therefore the judgment of the United States Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) is vacated, the findings and…

Michael G. Heyman, Professor Emeritus, The John Marshall Law School (Chicago) . Due Process Limits on Accomplice Liability In a prior piece in this journal, I noted some disturbing developments in the law of accomplice liability. By definition, complicity law attaches guilt to the accomplice for the criminal acts of others. Thus, no matter how…

The Real Cost Of Having Commanders In Charge Of Military Justice This article has appeared in Task & Purpose as a result of United States v. Woods, decided by the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on 18 June 2015. Incredibly, a senior naval officer was appointed to be the president of a court-martial…

Protect Our Defenders (POD) has this to say about the recent vote on Sen. Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act. Last week, 50 U.S. Senators stood with survivors and voted for Senator Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA). For two years in a row, a majority of the Senate has told the Pentagon to fix the…

As a defense counsel, I’m always looking for ways in which the prosecutor has opened the door to relevant evidence, but which for some reasons has been excluded or can’t be offered. MRE 412 comes to mind, as happened to me at trial in United States v. Savala, 70 M.J. 70 (C.A.A.F. 2011). But, BUT,…

Here is a link to the MCM changes effective 17 June 2015.

A former client directed me to the Air Force Reporter, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2015). In reading about an aspect of his case, my eyes rolled down to this. It is on page 50. CASE 2 Prior to a court-martial, a Special Victims’ Counsel (SVC) advised a client that the SVC would not be attending…

We often hear of prosecution misconduct going unchallenged or undisciplined. Two events this week are noteworthy though in efforts to hold prosecutors accountable. Armstrong v. Daily, et. al., is a case out of the Seventh. The M-W Journal Sentinal extracts this: He brought a civil rights suit against the prosecutor on his case, John Norsetter,…