NMCCA has issued six new decisions, of which four are merits. United States v. Maharrey, post-trial delay case. United States v. Thornton. Appellant raises ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) and sufficiency of the evidence. The findings and sentence are set-aside based on the IAC. The IAC relates to several issues: …
ACCA has decided United States v. Kloch. The accused wanted to tell the military judge in his unsworn that several of his co-accused’s had received 15 days confinement at summary court-martial, etc. The MJ would not allow the statement. ACCA found error, but that it was non-prejudicial.
The CGCCA has issued a decision in the court-martial: United States v. Montuoro. A short sweet reminder of sentence comparison issues when there are co-accused’s. Sentence comparison among co-accused’s is a different issue than sentence appropriateness.
All were submitted on their merits. All except one was a straight legal affirmance. In United States v. Carney, the court themselves found two errors that needed to be corrected. The convening authority failed to suspend the bad conduct discharge as agreed in a pretrial agreement, and a multiplicity issue…
All are straight legal denials on the merits.
Jansen. A sentence comparison case among co-accused’s. The case is of note to trial practitioners and SJA’s for it’s “discussion” of what is or isn’t a “closely related” case, and whether sentence disparity should be addressed with the CA post-trial. Principi. A CP case where the prosecution charged for contingencies…
Here is the footnote that should be of concern to all defense counsel, from United States v. Regaladozambrano, just decided. While the Court has declined to brand Capt [O’s] post-trial legal representation of the appellant as deficient, that restraint is exercised only due to the lack of any evidence of…
Five of the new cases are post-trial delay issues. More on the others later.
CAAF has released an opinion in United States v. Bush, __ M.J. ___ (C.A.A.F. 2009). That means, according to CAAFLog, two more to go before of all of the current pending decisions have been released. Judge Erdmann writes the opinion; Judge Ryan writes a “concur in the judgment” opinion which…
Monday, August 10, 2009: Fourth Circuit affirms CIA contractor detainee abuse conviction, Andrew Morgan [JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit [official website] on Monday affirmed [opinion, PDF] the conviction of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [official website] contractor on assault charges related to the abuse of…