The family of a former Fort Bragg soldier convicted of killing a Fayetteville woman and two small children in 1985 on Monday begged a military jury not to sentence him to death for the crimes.
The panel of 14 Army officers and enlisted personnel last week found Master Sgt. Timothy Hennis guilty of three counts of premeditated murder and is considering his sentence.
Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:
The last of four soldiers accused of tormenting Pvt. Keiffer Wilhelm, the Huron County teen who killed himself in Iraq last summer, was found guilty of minor offenses and will apparently escape serious punishment.
Staff Sgt. Bob Clements was convicted of obstruction of justice at a court martial that ended Sunday night in Kuwait. He was given a written reprimand and demoted one pay rank, according to a U.S. Army official.
The Army has a new and interesting addition to their Military Legal Resources.
Selected Papers of Edmund M. Morgan, Jr., Regarding the Drafting of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (1948-1949).
In the summer of 1948, in response to a need for a uniform military justice system in the newly reorganized and expanded post-World War II defense establishment, Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal appointed a committee to draft a uniform code of military justice (UCMJ). Secretary Forrestal selected Gordon Gray (Assistant Secretary of the Army), W.John Kenney (Under Secretary of the Navy), and Eugene M. Zuckert (Assistant Secretary of the Air Force) for the committee. He also selected Felix E. Larkin (Assistant General Counsel, Office of the Secretary of Defense) as Executive Secretary to this committee—known as the "Forrestal Committee"—and appointed Harvard Law professor Edmund Morris Morgan, Jr. (1879-1966) as chair.
1. SEALS:
Kokomo Perspective reports that:
Rep. Burton issued the following statement after the Navy dropped several charges against two Navy SEALs who are accused of mistreating terrorist mastermind Ahmed Hashim Abed, the man believed to be responsible for the infamous mutilations of four American contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004.
Oooops, even his own family appears to be dissing’ him according to this report from The Greeley Tribune.
His Greeley relatives are putting distance between themselves and his birther campaign.
Lakin’s father Frank told the Greeley Tribune Friday that his son’s video wasn’t representative of the family. “This does not reflect the opinions or the attitude of the family by any means,” he said. “We’re Obama supporters.”
FayObserver reports:
A military jury has found Army Master Sgt. Timothy B. Hennis guilty of three specifications of pre-meditated murder.
The members of the court-martial panel returned with their verdict about 10:35 a.m. They had deliberated for two hours and 45 minutes over Wednesday and today
Gazette.com reports that:
An Army prosecutor Tuesday opened the trial of an Iraq war veteran by accusing him of the “ultimate betrayal” — raping a comrade’s wife.
Spc. Philip C. Vermeiren, 28, is accused of assaulting the woman early Oct. 31 during an alcohol-fueled party at the Fort Carson apartment she shared with her husband.
This is likely a duplicate post, but it’s worth it anyway. Here again is a piece from my old Crim. Law prof about forensics.
Paul C. Giannelli (Case Western Reserve University School of Law) (University of Illinois Law Review, Forthcoming, Case Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2010-6) has posted Daubert and Forensic Science: The Pitfalls of Law Enforcement Control of Scientific Research on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences published a landmark report on forensic science: Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. The Report represents one of the most important developments in forensic science since the establishment of the crime laboratory in the 1920s. Within months, Justice Scalia cited the report in Commonwealth v. Melendez-Diaz, noting that “[s]erious deficiencies have been found in the forensic evidence used in criminal trials” and “[f]forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation.” After two years of studying fingerprints, handwriting, ballistics, and other common forensic techniques, the Academy concluded that “some forensic science disciplines are supported by little rigorous systematic research to validate the discipline’s basic premises and techniques.” Indeed, “only nuclear DNA analysis has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between an evidentiary sample and a specific individual or source.”
Petty Officer Keefe’s trial is scheduled to commence in Iraq on 17 April 2010.
Here is an excellent review, by Dwight “ML” Sullivan at CAAFLog on the political posturing, pseudo-lawyering, and plain gaffs about these cases.
Here’s a case from New Jersey of some interest, Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, Inc., 2010 N.J. LEXIS 241 (March 30, 2010).
[W]e find that Stengart had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the e-mails she exchanged with her attorney on Loving Care’s laptop.
Stengart plainly took steps to protect the privacy of those e-mails and shield them from her employer. She used a personal, password-protected e-mail account instead of her company e-mail address and did not save the account’s password on her computer. In other words, she had a subjective expectation of privacy in messages to and from her lawyer discussing the subject of a future lawsuit.
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog