Air Force Times reports that:
The court-martial of Airman 1st Class Dustin A. Miller will begin Nov. 8. The security forces patrolman faces charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon, aggravated assault inflicting grievous bodily harm and assault with the intent to commit murder.
See prior postings about the Mackie (Trask) case in regard to jurisdictional issues.
Attorneys for a disgruntled Army Reserve soldier who fatally shot his supervisor after his vacation was denied say his fasting to meet stringent military weight guidelines left him in a trancelike state.
(This courtroom sketch shows Army Reserve Sgt. Rashad Valmont during military hearing Monday, Aug. 30, 2010 at Fort McPherson, Ga. Attorney William Cassara, not shown, said Valmont was dehydrated, exhausted and delirious when he burst into Master Sgt. Pedro Mercado’s office in nearby Fort Gillem in June and shot him six times. (AP Photo/Richard Miller) (Richard Miller – AP))
I first posted on this here. More information about the case is seeping out. Some of this may be circular reporting.
Fox5News (Las Vegas) reports:
The Army isn’t saying what motivated the killings of three Afghan civilians, whose deaths have led to charges against a Nevada soldier and four others from Washington state’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
The LA Times has interesting piece which essentially posits that both the defense and Congress are being stonewalled in production of relevant information. Usually it’s only the defense.
But even before the gavel comes down, two legal battles are underway to try to force the Army and the Department of Justice to turn over documents dealing with Hasan’s past, particularly his personnel files, his mental health records and other documents that might suggest the government should have known he was a dangerously troubled soldier.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has taken the unusual step of issuing subpoenas demanding the records as part of its investigation into the shooting spree. What they want to know, said committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), is "why was he not stopped before he took 13 American lives, and how can we prevent such a tragedy from happening again?"
Fox11.com reports that:
Major Hasan is on his way from hospital to Belton jail where he will be housed at an approximate cost of $206K.
He is wheelchair bound – question, is he a flight risk?
The FayObserver.com is reporting that a members panel has been selected and that trial on the merits will begin Wednesday, 17 March 2009.
The prosecution of SPC Ivette Davila, at Fort Lewis, will generate some interest; hers will be the first death penalty prosecution of a woman under the UCMJ.
Checking – has a woman ever been executed as a result of a court-martial in the United States? The answer is no under the UCMJ. The two most famous death penalty cases involving women were Kinsella v. Singleton, 361 U.S. 234 (1960), and Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957). (These cases stood, until the recent change to Article 2, UCMJ, for the proposition that there was no court-martial jurisdiction over civilians except under limited circumstances. The constitutionality of the recent changes to Article 2, UCMJ, extending jurisdiction over civilians is yet to be tested.)
Noted authority on the UCMJ Frederick Bernays Wiener represented Mrs. Kinsella.
A Hohenfels-based soldier was sentenced to 8½ years in prison Thursday in a knife attack on a German family last summer.
Racine, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, was originally charged with one count of attempted premeditated murder, along with several lesser charges, according to the official Army charge sheet. But after the three-day trial before a military judge, Racine was convicted of aggravated assault with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm.
But the defense argued that Racine thought he was in a war zone, and that he attacked the German family as he sought shelter in their apartment.
An airman shot during a disagreement with a fellow airman appeared indecisive about what actually happened in a Rapid City apartment last September.
Piland recalled fighting with Santana and holding him in a choke hold, but did not remember statements he made to civilian investigators. He also had no recollection of portions of his testimony before a Pennington County grand jury.
Santana initially faced charges in Pennington County for shooting Piland three times. Those charges were dropped and he was turned over to military authorities for prosecution in October.
Nearly two years after prosecutors in Jacksonville decided not to charge anyone in the gunfight that killed a club owner outside his bar north of Springfield, the Navy has acquitted a sailor of murder in the case.
NewsJacksonville.com reports —
Navy prosecutors would only say they had believed the case should be pursued.
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog