Articles Posted in umcj

In the July Army Lawyer Judge McDonald has some comments based on his first year on the bench. (I have noted over the years that it takes most judges about a year to get their relative bearing.) I think we can all echo his comments and find a myriad of examples from our own and…

The Daily Weekly reports on a Fort Lewis Soldier convicted in civilian court of murder. The piece that caught my eye was this: Since the start of the war in Iraq in 2003, there have been at least a dozen slayings on Western Washington soil alone involving active troops or veterans of Iraq. The body…

Gannet News While he still vacillates between regret and indignity over what happened in Iraq, he has given up thoughts of going back to retrieve a separate bundle of money that he says he found and buried in the sands — and Army investigators never discovered. Army Times reports: Less than two years ago, Earl…

Prof. Colin Miller posts: Somewhat similar to its federal counterpart, Indiana Rule of Evidence 410 provides in relevant part that Evidence of a plea of guilty or admission of the charge which was later withdrawn, or a plea of nolo contendere, or of an offer so to plead to the crime charged or any other…

Military.com reports that: Both the Montgomery and Post 9/11 GI Bills are worth over $49,000. This money is not a loan and will help you cover the costs of getting a degree. Full-time students receive up to $1,368 a month no matter how much tuition costs. The Post 9/11 GI Bill may even give you…

United States v. Holmes. On direct appeal the NMCCA set aside the original findings of guilty to negligent homicide and the sentence. A rehearing on sentence was authorized for the remaining guilty finding of false official statement. The CA found a rehearing was impractical and approved a punishment of “no punishment.”

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…

Moral: when you go AWOL you can’t keep running if you run out of gas. As I drive I-95 I often see military convoys. It had not occurred to me that one or more of the drivers was in the process of going AWOL. An Army private is in custody in Daytona Beach for being…

The Army’s attempt to stem a rising tide of suicides made it impossible for a Fort Bliss soldier convicted of cruelty toward subordinates to get a fair trial, the soldier’s parents say. “I still maintain that this was a miscarriage of justice,” said John Taylor, father of Pvt. Jarrett Taylor. “They needed a conviction and…

FrumForum interviewed retired Major Merideth A. Bucher, author of the much cited paper, The Impact of Pregnancy on U.S. Army Readiness. Bucher explains that a woman who becomes pregnant ceases to be available for combat service. She will be returned home; her unit is left missing a body, a soldier. She passionately told of her…