The court-martial of Airman 1st Class Dustin A. Miller will begin Nov. 8. The security forces patrolman faces charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon, aggravated assault inflicting grievous bodily harm and assault with the intent to commit murder.

See prior postings about the Mackie (Trask) case in regard to jurisdictional issues.

Attorneys for a disgruntled Army Reserve soldier who fatally shot his supervisor after his vacation was denied say his fasting to meet stringent military weight guidelines left him in a trancelike state. (This courtroom sketch shows Army Reserve Sgt. Rashad Valmont during military hearing Monday, Aug. 30, 2010 at Fort McPherson, Ga. Attorney William Cassara, not shown, said Valmont was dehydrated, exhausted and delirious when he burst into Master Sgt. Pedro Mercado’s office in nearby Fort Gillem in June and shot him six times. (AP Photo/Richard Miller) (Richard Miller – AP))

The Washington Post has this report.

NDTV.com has this report:

Army revises training to deal with unfit recruits This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan. But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits.

Fox5News (Las Vegas) reports:

The Army isn’t saying what motivated the killings of three Afghan civilians, whose deaths have led to charges against a Nevada soldier and four others from Washington state’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The Army’s charging documents say all three of the victims were shot and two of them were hit by grenades in separate incidents in Kandahar Province earlier this year.

Seattle Times reports:

Five soldiers accused of murdering three Afghan civilians earlier this year allegedly threw grenades at them and shot them with rifles, according to charging papers released Wednesday by Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Two of the soldiers also are accused of beating a fellow soldier who might have been an informant, while a third is accused of trying to impede the investigation by asking a colleague to erase a computer hard drive which contained evidence of the crimes.

But even before the gavel comes down, two legal battles are underway to try to force the Army and the Department of Justice to turn over documents dealing with Hasan’s past, particularly his personnel files, his mental health records and other documents that might suggest the government should have known he was a dangerously troubled soldier. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has taken the unusual step of issuing subpoenas demanding the records as part of its investigation into the shooting spree. What they want to know, said committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), is “why was he not stopped before he took 13 American lives, and how can we prevent such a tragedy from happening again?” At the same time, Hasan’s defense attorney, John P. Galligan, a retired Army colonel from Belton, Texas, said he has been deprived of the records despite repeated requests. Without the material, he said, it will be very difficult to defend Hasan at the hearing.

R.C.M. 405(f)(10) seems to provide for Mr. Galligan being given what he’s been asking for.

Major Hasan is on his way from hospital to Belton jail where he will be housed at an approximate cost of $206K.

He is wheelchair bound – question, is he a flight risk?

[T]he Army is erecting a 15 foot fence around the courthouse in Ft. Hood in preparations for the Article 32 military hearing on June 1, 2010.

Other reports indicate Mr. Galligan has requested a delay in the Article 32, UCMJ, hearing.

Checking – has a woman ever been executed as a result of a court-martial in the United States? The answer is no under the UCMJ. The two most famous death penalty cases involving women were Kinsella v. Singleton, 361 U.S. 234 (1960), and Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957). (These cases stood, until the recent change to Article 2, UCMJ, for the proposition that there was no court-martial jurisdiction over civilians except under limited circumstances. The constitutionality of the recent changes to Article 2, UCMJ, extending jurisdiction over civilians is yet to be tested.)

Noted authority on the UCMJ Frederick Bernays Wiener represented Mrs. Kinsella.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that:

As of June 30, 2009 there were 53 women on death row. This constitutes 1.6% of the total death row population of about 3,297 persons. In the past 100 years, over 40 women have been executed in the U.S, including 11 since 1976. See, Women Executed in the U.S. Since 1900 for the date, state, race, and method of each execution.

A Hohenfels-based soldier was sentenced to 8½ years in prison Thursday in a knife attack on a German family last summer. Racine, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, was originally charged with one count of attempted premeditated murder, along with several lesser charges, according to the official Army charge sheet. But after the three-day trial before a military judge, Racine was convicted of aggravated assault with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. But the defense argued that Racine thought he was in a war zone, and that he attacked the German family as he sought shelter in their apartment. “He was afraid because in his mind at the moment of the offense, he was in an enemy zone,” defense attorney Capt. Benjamin Wright said in his closing arguments. “In short, he was out of his mind.” Paul Montalbano, a psychologist from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, testified for the defense that Racine suffered from PTSD and was an alcoholic.

The sentence included RIR to E1, TF, and a DD.

Stars & Stripes reports.

An airman shot during a disagreement with a fellow airman appeared indecisive about what actually happened in a Rapid City apartment last September. Piland recalled fighting with Santana and holding him in a choke hold, but did not remember statements he made to civilian investigators. He also had no recollection of portions of his testimony before a Pennington County grand jury. Santana initially faced charges in Pennington County for shooting Piland three times. Those charges were dropped and he was turned over to military authorities for prosecution in October.

Rapid City Journal. Referral to court-martial expected soon.

There is no double jeopardy issue – no state prosecution, and even if there was this would be the federal sovereign and state sovereign’s acting independently. The fact that the state decided not to prosecute is not a bar to prosecution at court-martial under the UCMJ. Legally, the Air Force could prosecute even if there’s been an acquittal.

Nearly two years after prosecutors in Jacksonville decided not to charge anyone in the gunfight that killed a club owner outside his bar north of Springfield, the Navy has acquitted a sailor of murder in the case.

NewsJacksonville.com reports —

Navy prosecutors would only say they had believed the case should be pursued. “Jacksonville authorities had reviewed the case and decided not to prosecute under Florida law,” a statement from the Navy’s Norfolk public affairs office said. “Navy authorities made an independent decision that the case merited prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

So, a military panel acquitted in a court-martial where only a two—thirds majority of those voting is required to convict, the Jacksonville police found the case a justifiable homicide, the state prosecutor isn’t sure, but the trial counsel are. So, is there a direct or indirect criticism of the members here? If so, is that allowed?

A senior military official said Friday that a new lead prosecutor has been appointed in the Fort Hood shooting case, a man who secured the death penalty in a similar case four years ago. Col. Michael Mulligan will head the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Hasan, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the investigation.

No word on when the military will assign a death penalty experienced military defense counsel to the case.

No word on the AR 15-6 investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of information about the case from a person who has been told not to say anything to the media, but who apparently has.

A sailor accused of fatally shooting a man outside a Florida nightclub in 2007 will be court-martialed on a murder charge next week at Naval Station Mayport.

Navy Times reports, the court-martial will be for killing a owner of a night club in Jacksonville, FL. The article cites Article 111, UCMJ, but I suspect they mean 118.

Below is the text of the sworn affidavit, dated April 21, in which Dr. MacDonell explains how knowledge he obtained while waiting to testify in the case could have changed dramatically its outcome,

in the court-martial of 1Lt Michael Behenna, for murder and other violations of the UCMJ.

McCarty & Fatigante, at BigGovernment blog.

Having now admitted to murder, Fort Lewis Spc. Ivette Davila today awaits word on whether she will face the death penalty for it. Davila, 23, an Army chemical specialist, is charged with killing Staff Sgt. Timothy Miller and Sgt. Randi Miller in their Parkland home March 2, 2008, soaking their bodies in muriatic acid and kidnapping their 7-month-old daughter.

This case has been discussed in comparison to insanity issues that may be raised by Major Hasan in his Fort Hood court-martial.

You can immediately see why PTSD might not be sufficient of a mental health issue to be a defense rather than mitigation, because:

However, as the discussion to the Rule points out, an issue of partial mental responsibility may go to rebut a specific intent (e.g. premeditation) required for an offense.

The presumption of competence places the burden on the defense to raise it. The Members Panel, likely from Fort Hood, will have to decide whether any evidence presented overcomes the presumption of responsibility for the acts at Fort Hood. Next a look at some of the cases that apply the defense (or don’t). The defense is a very hard one to make.

A Davis-Monthan airman was acquitted Tuesday in the slaying of another airman in 2007 during a south-side house party, an official said. A court martial panel found Senior Airman Philip Andre Howard not guilty of the June 2007 death of Airman 1st Class Brian Santos, said Capt. Stacie Shafran, a D-M spokeswoman. Santos died from multiple blows to the head that cracked his skull after he and Howard got into a fight at the party. Howard wasn’t charged with the murder until April 1, nearly two years after the incident. Howard’s enlistment expired two years ago, but the Air Force kept him on active duty to retain legal jurisdiction over him.

Questions about speedy trial?

Here are some links relating to secondary traumatization.

Zimmering, Munroe, & Gulliver, Secondary Traumatization in Mental Health Care Providers, 20 Psych. Times (Apr. 2003).

KevinMD.com, Did Nadal Malik Hasan suffer from compassion fatigue or vicarious traumatization? 6 November 2009.