The Seattle Times reports the pending court-martial case:
Spc. Jeremy Morlock, a 22-year-old Army soldier from Wasilla, Alaska, will face charges in connection with the murders of three Afghan civilians and other crimes at a hearing scheduled Monday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
And here’s a Foreign Policy note.
The Chronicle reports:
Barbara (Obremski) Allen, widow of Chester native First Lt. Louis Allen, will host a book-signing of her new release “Front Toward Enemy” On Saturday, Oct. 23 from 3-6 p.m., at John S. Burke Catholic High School in Goshen.
When Lt. Allen was murdered in Iraq in 2005 he left behind Barbara and their four sons ages 20 months to 6 years. While the Sergeant accused of his murder signed a confession, it was rejected and he eventually walked out of the Army and his court martial a free man. This is the impossible story.
Couple of new NMCCA decisions on some court-martial appeals.
United States v. Soucie. In this case NMCCA decides that the military judge failed to adequately inquire into a duress defense on providency.
The accused raised six errors and the NMCCA specified an additional error. The government agreed that a charge under Article 123a should be set aside because it failed to state an offense. This left a sole specification of impersonation.
Here is Professor Friedman’s post about Briscoe.
The Virginia Supreme Court today issued its decision in Briscoe on remand from the United States Supreme Court. . The court held that the former Virginia statutory scheme (under which the defendant had to call a lab analyst as his witness if he wanted to examine the analyst) was unconstitutional. This, of course, was the point that I sought to establish in bringing the petition for certiorari; Melendez-Diaz made the point clear, and now the Virginia Supreme Court has drawn the obvious conclusion.
The court held that the error was harmless in Briscoe’s case, but Cypress’s conviction was reversed. I expect his case will plead out.
Here are the SCOTUSWiki links on the Supreme Court litigation.
This is the 13th day that APF (safeguardourconstitution), LTC Lakin’s support site, has failed to post the military judge’s findings and conclusions, and advertises as “Breaking News,” “Judge to Rules (sic) . . ..”
This is the 13th day that LTC Lakin and his team have failed to file a petition for a writ of mandamus or prohibition with the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. (I’m reliably informed that no such petition has been filed as of yesterday.)
1. Delay in filing the writ will not necessarily gain delay in the trial.
WFAA.com reports that:
Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal Hasan’s attorney tells News 8 he will ask a military judge Thursday morning to close the upcoming Article 32 Hearing for his client to the public and press.
“I think it’s necessary to ensure he can eventually get a fair trial at Fort Hood,” (Ret.) Col. John Galligan, Hasan’s civilian attorney, told News 8 Wednesday. “We need to make sure his Sixth Amendment rights are not jeopardized.”
The Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals has issued an opinion in United States v. Hull.
The issues on appeal are: whether the staff judge advocate (SJA) erred by advising the convening authority (CA), pursuant to Rule for Courts-Martial (R.C.M.) 1106, that no new trial was warranted and whether the CA erred by failing to order a new trial despite the SJA’s acknowledgement that the appellant had presented new evidence that fell within the parameters of R.C.M. 1210. Further, the appellant filed a petition for a new trial pursuant to Article 73, UCMJ, 10 U.S.C. § 873.
AFCCA denied relief on the merits of the appeal and denied a new trial. AFCCA reasoned that even if the information was newly discovered (AFCCA was not certain it could not have been obtained during pretrial preparations), the evidence would not,
Here is a link to United States v. Brasington., decided 13 September 2010. It is not unusual for an appellant to be issued a DD214, Honorable Discharge, sometime after a court-martial at which the appellant was adjudged a punitive discharge.
In this case, we are asked, following remand, whether an honorable discharge, effective after this court’s affirming a sentence that included a bad-conduct discharge, has the effect of remitting that discharge. We hold appellant’s administrative discharge was voidable, properly voided, and did not remit appellant’s premature discharge.
This was a rather odd situation because the appellant was an active duty Soldier and it was the Reserve command giving him the discharge. ACCA found that the Commander, HRC-StLouis had no authority to discharge appellant.
Here is a training video and handouts from NACDL. This may be helpful with your junior enlisted court-martial clients who are foreign nationals.
In Padilla v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court held that defense lawyers must affirmatively and correctly advise their clients about the immigration consequences of entering a plea and failure to do so constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. NACDL, in collaboration with the Defending Immigrants Partnership, will present a free live online training to discuss defense counsel’s duty under Padilla and related issues. Expert faculty analyze the Padilla decision, outline the steps defense counsel must take to provide effective assistance of counsel to their non-citizen clients, and provide essential instruction[.]
This is the 12th day that APF (safeguardourconstitution), LTC Lakin’s support site, has failed to post the military judge’s findings and conclusions, and advertises as “Breaking News,” “Judge to Rules (sic) . . ..”
The Post & Email reports today, submitted by Maj. Gen. Vallely:
The current Lakin defense strategy is limited to an ongoing search for a missing birth certificate that is of no real consequence, and they have been denied discovery access to any of Obama records, as well as anyone who has had access to those records. There is no defense for Lakin on this basis. . . .
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog