Center for Prosecutor Integrity.
An Epidemic of Prosecutor Misconduct.
Prosecutor Ethics in Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Cases
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How do you get attention, you say:
Two-Thirds Of Military Supreme Court Cases Are About CP
Perhaps a little known reality is the overwhelming flow of CP appeals into the docket of the U.S. military’s highest appellate court. About two-thirds of the docket in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces consists of CP appeals.
So, is it the Supremes, or is it CAAF.
Is it petitions, or is it grants. This seems a rather odd statistic, I would have thought 120 related cases would be a bigger contributor to the military supreme court.
I agree that lawyers and judges need to have a far better understanding of computers, the internet, and how these kinds of cases should be investigated and litigated.
[Update]
United States v. Kelly was decided last term.
During that term the court issued 39 published opinions.
Six of those cases involved child pornography. I’m a lawyer not a mathematician, but I don’t think that is two-thirds.
Now that’s all pretty unscientific because it does not account for petitions filed that may be CP related.
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We often have cases where medical records, mental health records, and other similarly protected records need to be provided to a TC for fowarding to the MJ for an in-camera review.
If the TC already has the records and has reviewed them, the proper approach is that the defense gets a copy of everything the TC has seen -that’s an Article 46 issue.
But, if done correctly, the records are received by the TC sealed. But therein lies the problem. How the records are sealed (or not sealed) can be problematic.
Suggestion.
When getting protected records from an institution or holder the court order or TC letter or subpeona should explain how to properly seal and mail records. Do the following.
1. Make sufficiently legible copies so that they may be further legibly copied.
2. Place the records in a plain envelope.
3. Clearly mark the outside of the envelope with “HIPPA (or similar) PROTECTED RECORDS ICO US V. X.”
4. Put that envelope in a mailing envelope or carton and mail.
This double sealing is the required method for mailing classified material and can be an effective and suitable way to ensure protected records are protected, even from inadvertent review.
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Another tragic tale of tears fed by OSI lies.
By Dave Philipps
Facing pressure to combat drug use and sexual assault at the Air Force Academy, the Air Force has created a secret system of cadet informants to hunt for misconduct among students.
Cadets who attend the publicly-funded academy near Colorado Springs must pledge never to lie. But the program pushes some to do just that: Informants are told to deceive classmates, professors and commanders while snapping photos, wearing recording devices and filing secret reports.
For one former academy student, becoming a covert government operative meant not only betraying the values he vowed to uphold, it meant being thrown out of the academy as punishment for doing the things the Air Force secretly told him to do.
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Here’s a report about Australian military justice.
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/adf-aint-broke-dont-fix-it-20131128-2ycru.html
Unlike the US, since Solorio, the Australians defer most criminal prosecutions to the civilian courts, and they focus on true disciplinary problems. If nothing else they get cheaper military justice. I seem to recollect GEN Ordierno estimating $116M to stand up a MJ system that it appears Congress will soon impose.
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Here is the new Army policy on Army personnel convicted of a sex offense and who don’t get a punitive discharge.
ARMY DIRECTIVE 2013-21.pdf
736K View Download
No orders overseas, and to be returned CONUS if already overseas is an included assignment policy.
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Those of us who deal with them know that crime labs are not infallible. That’s because they are staffed with people. Here is an ongoing issue that’s coming to some intermediate resolution.
Remember USACIL.
Remember Brooks AF Drug Lab (and how they initially hid the problem). http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Gross_Misconduct_at_Military_Crime_Lab.php
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/19/142444/army-threatens-to-fire-whistleblower.html
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/29/134411/were-army-crime-lab-problems-withheld.html
Remember DCFL.
Remember the Mobley letter, an issue of bias and how military prosecutors might complain when their own experts testify truthfully.
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4055
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Now here is something useful for the policy makers, and by extension defense counsel.
Center for Prosecutor Integrity to Establish ‘Registry of Prosecutorial Misconduct’
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The Army will soon begin mandatory discharge processing for any Soldier or officer convicted of a sexual assault. There is no bar to how far they will go back in the persons career, and also it appears it will not matter if the person was allowed to reenlist.
Separation proceedings for the soldiers will be started regardless of the date of their conviction for the sex offense, according to the directive.
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CrimLawProfBlog brings a link to a summary of last year’s criminal law cases at the Supremes.
The Supreme Court 2012 Term was one in which the Court tackled several of the most critical issues that arise in our criminal justice system. Perhaps most importantly, as the 50th Anniversary of the Court’s decision in Gideon v. Wainwright approached, Court addressed the problems presented by counsel who had not provided the effective assistance of counsel during the plea bargaining process. Whereas it was common knowledge that the vast majority of cases in the criminal courts of this country are resolved by plea bargaining, the Court had never required that court-appointed counsel provide competent advice when recommending rejection of a plea offer by the prosecution. It had not even been constitutionally required that counsel communicate to his client the existence of an offer that entailed a reduced sentence were the defendant to plead guilty. The Court also addressed the matter of what action by counsel would constitute abandonment of the client in the post-conviction phase of a case where the client had received the death penalty. And, finally, the Court considered what had remained an unresolved issue: was it constitutional to impose a sentence of life without parole for a juvenile who had been convicted of murder. This article provides analysis of the Court’s handling of these four critical issues.
Just the other day AFCCA had the IAC issue for consideration. See United States v. Gerdes, ACM S32091 (A.F. Ct. Crim. App. 14 Nov. 2013)(unpub.).
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