LTC Lakin 5 — Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog

World News Daily has a piece on LTC Lakin and his radio inteview with G. Gordon Liddy. Here are a couple of interesting points from the article.

“We are today (12 August 2010) officially requesting that discovery,” Jensen said. “If the government refuses to give it to us, then we will, a week from today, file a motion to compel discovery.

“I can’t think of a single reason why the judge would take the government’s position,” he said.

Anybody got a copy of the discovery/R.C.M. 701 request they can share – how about you American Patriot Foundation? Motions such as this are due with the court no later than 20 August 2010 per the CMO. The prosecution will have until 27 August 2010 to respond per the CMO. Interestingly discovery could have been requested on the day of the referral or any day after, see, R.C.M. 701.

Lakin declined to follow deployment orders after he tried through military channels to affirm the validity of orders under Obama’s command and was rebuffed. He had been scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan again.

Actually he refused and extended a challenge to be court-martialled, but that may just be quibbling with the choice of language. What is most interesting is another reference to his prior use of “military channels.” The military culture, IMHO, allows for situations where a person may question an order for many reason. But, once the order is affirmed and if appropriate an explanation is given, the order must be executed. I think there is a sufficient analogy in U.S. Naval Regulations.

Lakin confirmed during the same interview that he’s received “overwhelming support” from many of his peers. But he was counseled by his lawyer not to discuss specifics because of the pending court martial, scheduled for October.

I have previously posted on LTC Lakin’s “as yet undisclosed strategy,” and in my gossip session with Dwight the other day I revisited my theory of his secret strategy. LTC Lakin believes (and I’m sure he’s right) that there are in fact many military people who agree with him but for one reason or another are remaining quiet and obeying orders. His gamble is that he will end up with a panel of such senior O-5 and O-6 members who will not convict him, or if they do convict that they will kiss him on the sentence.

It occurred to me that some context for comments might be appropriate as to how LTC Lakin is acting. So, let’s look at this from the perspective of U. S. Naval Regulations and how the naval service (which include U. S. Marines) officer culture is set.

I don’t have time to research the Army Regulations, but I’d be interested in knowing if there are similar regulations or written directives on how officers should conduct themselves.

TJ Hunter says:

August 15, 2010 at 12:56 pm

I think that Naval regulations are much more ‘precise’ than the other services — mayhaps because sailors are intrinsically mutinous =8) or more regularly get into trouble on shore leave.

Some time back I researched whether an officer had a “duty to report” a UCMJ violation.

There is, indeed, Navy Regulations Article 1137 – Obligation to Report Offenses, which Obligates Sailors to report “all offenses under the UCMJ” — but I couldn’t find a similar regulation for the Army.

(And just for the record, google only found two cases relating to that article, and one of them was used to defend an action.)

August 15, 2010 at 1:12 pm

Which regulation you referred to just this year :

http://court-martial-ucmj.com/new-cases/caaf-decides-self-report-case/

Reality Check says:

August 15, 2010 at 3:24 pm

As one who has followed the Birther movement since the fall of 2008 I see some familiar memes playing out in the Lakin case. First, almost all the information at this early date is being provided by the Lakin team and completely unreliable and biased web sites like World Net Daily. For example, Phil quoted the WND article saying that Lakin “has overwhelming support” among his peers”. Since the source for this is the WND article and Lakin himself it may be completely dismissed. In the early stages of the brither movement we saw this play out many times. Phil Berg and others would issue statements and file cases then the right wing media sources like WND would intimate that Obama would probably not even survive until the Inauguration. Rumors of a new Kenyan birth certificate would spread through the Birther blogs like wildfire and trumpet the end of his Presidency before it even began. Slowly we learned that we should download the birther filings from the federal court system and see what the judges were really saying. At one time the sites like RSOL, Free Republic and WND would assume that when a Supreme Court Justice forwarded an emergency motion from a birther to the entire court that he was agreeing with the motion and that the court was on the verge of stopping the Inauguration. We had to educate the birthers that this was just a formality and in no way indicated that the lawsuit had any validity. We have now seen 71 birther cases go down in flames so the Lakin case doesn’t really represent anything new for those who have seen it all before.

I will give you my own anecdotal story on Lakin and his “support”. I was flying last week and had the pleasure of being seated next to a bright young soldier on his way back home from Afghanistan. He was also a veteran of Iraq. After we chatted for around an hour about conditions in Afghanistan and what life was like there I asked him if he had ever heard of LTC Lakin. He said “yes, we know about him and we think he is a turd”. I don’t think I need to elaborate. That says it all so eloquently.

There is lots to say about the American Patriot Foundation and Paul Jensen but I will save that for a future comment.