Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog

Secession and security clearances

November 23, 2012 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Here is Bill Henderson on secession “petitions” and security clearances.

DSS personnel have recently received questions from security personnel at cleared contractors about whether contractors should file adverse information reports pursuant to NISPOM paragraph 1-302 regarding cleared persons who sign petitions to allow a state to withdraw or secede from the United States.

It also appears that erroneous statements have been made to the effect that DSS is directing contractors to treat the signing of such petitions as reportable adverse information.

Now what another innocent life taken

November 22, 2012 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

AP reports the following.

Johnathan Montgomery spent the past four years in a Virginia state prison saying the same thing a lot of inmates do: He was innocent. Convicted in 2008 of molesting a 10-year-old girl outside her grandmother’s Hampton home when he was 14, he insisted the alleged 2000 assault never happened. Turns out, he was telling the truth.

Coast is being identified because authorities say she admitted fabricating the story and because she has been charged with perjury. According to media reports, prosecutors say that Coast told investigators that her parents caught her looking at pornographic websites in 2007 when she was 17, so she concocted a story of prior sexual abuse to explain her behavior. When the alleged assault occurred, Montgomery lived across the street from Coast’s grandmother in Hampton, Va. The two had previously played together.

Worth the read-off topic

November 18, 2012 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

David Frum has this post in todays The Daily Beast.

“The hard decisions are not not the ones you make in the heat of battle. Far harder to make are those involved in speaking your mind about some hare-brained scheme, which proposes to commit troops to action under conditions where failure is almost certain, and the only results will be the needless sacrifice of precious lives.” -Matthew B. Ridgeway, Memoirs (1956).

At the same time Salon reports on his book, “The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor.” The header of the piece is:

Cross examination as to credibility

November 17, 2012 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Here is an interesting case from the Tenth, about cross-examination of a witness about a prior judicial “finding” that the witness was not credible — United States v. Woodard.

The court states this basic principle from its own jurisprudence:

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right of a defendant to “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” U.S. Const. amend. VI. One of the primary interests secured by the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause is the right of cross-examination. Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 315 (1974). This is the“principal means by which the believability of a witness and the truth of his testimony are tested.” Id. at 316. A violation of this constitutional right occurs when “the defendant is prohibited from engaging in otherwise appropriate cross-examination that, as a result, precludes him from eliciting information from which jurors could draw vital inferences in his favor.” United States v. Montelongo, 420 F.3d 1169, 1175 (10th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted). Stated differently, “‘a defendant’s right to confrontation may be violated if the trial court precludes an entire relevant area of cross-examination.’” Id. (quoting Parker v. Scott, 349 F.3d 1302, 1316 (10th Cir. 2005)).

Worth the read

November 16, 2012 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

I received an initial eRelease of certain chapters from, The Attorney’s Guide to Defending Vets in Criminal Court, soon to be published in hard copy.

Very interesting chapters devoted to PTSD.

Here’s a tie in the United States v. Bales.

Confrontation and authenticating IP documents and reports in CP cases

November 15, 2012 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Here is an interesting case from the First, United States v. Cameron, decided 14 November 2012. The issue is confrontation and the admission of various internet provider records. I think this case helpful in litigating the paper that the prosecution seeks to use in CP cases.

We thus presume that Cameron’s challenge is to the following categories of evidence: (1) the Yahoo! Account Management Tool and Login Tracker data — this data was attached to the CP Reports and was also produced in response to search warrants; (2) electronic receipts of Yahoo’s CP Reports to NCMEC — these receipts were produced by Yahoo! in response to search warrants; (3) NCMEC’s CyberTipline Reports to ICAC; and (4) the Google Hello Connection Logs.

Prosecutors Hide, Defendants Seek: The Erosion of Brady Through the Defendant Due Diligence Rule
Kate Weisburd, 60 UCLA L. Rev. 138.

Padilla and retroactivity

November 2, 2012 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

The potential impact of Padilla v. Kentucky is ongoing. Two primary issues.

Is the holding retroactive. The Supremes have that issue before it.

Does Padilla extend the defense counsel obligations beyond immigration consequences?

Court-Martial Trial Practice

Secession and security clearances

Now what another innocent life taken

Worth the read-off topic

Cross examination as to credibility

Worth the read

Confrontation and authenticating IP documents and reports in CP cases

It’s character

Worth the read about Member bias

Why continuing discovery issues

Padilla and retroactivity