The Army has filed court-martial charges against Alexis Hutchinson, an Army cook who refused to deploy to Afghanistan because she couldn’t find anyone to look after her 1-year-old son.
The court-martial charges are AWOL and missing movement, offenses under the UCMJ.
The trial for the Navy SEAL accused of punching an alleged al-Qaida terrorist while in U.S. custody in Iraq has been postponed until May 3, but the trial will remain in Norfolk.
Capt. Moira Modzelewski granted government prosecutors the continuance on the grounds that most of the evidence in the case is still undergoing a classification review and has yet to be seen by either the prosecution or the defense.
Navy Times reports.
Two officers accused of stealing stealing classified material from an underground missile launch facility at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota have been allowed to resign rather than face courts-martial, the military said Wednesday.
A hearing was held in September 2008 to determine whether Borowiecki would face a trial. A supervisor. Capt. David Walbeck, testified at the hearing that Borowiecki wanted the domino-size device as a souvenir because he thought it would be "a cool thing to have." Walbeck also testified that had the technology been compromised, it could have led to "unintended detonation" of a nuclear missile.
The Air Force later downplayed Walbeck’s statement, saying the launch device is one of many safeguards that must work together to ensure security.
The Air Force has said Borowiecki told officials that Abbas had lied by saying he destroyed his device. The Air Force refused to confirm whether that device remains missing.
LA Times reports.
Fifty State Survey of Adult Sex Offender Registration Laws
Brenda V. Smith
American University – Washington College of Law; American University – NIC/WCL Project on Addressing Prison Rape
August 1, 2009Abstract:
This publication is part of a larger scholarly project and one in a series that aims to create a “legal toolkit” for addressing sexual violence in custody. This chart catalogues statutes that address adult sex offender registration requirements in all fifty states, as well as surrounding territories. This chart provides a list of all registrable offenses; indicates whether sex offender registration is required for staff sexual misconduct; details the type of information maintained in the sex offender registry, community notification and other websites; identifies limitations on residency or employment; and identifies the duration of registration.
Jenny Roberts, Ignorance Is Effectively Bliss: Collateral Consequences, Silence, and Misinformation in the Guilty-Plea Process, 95 IOWA L. R. 119 (2009).
ABSTRACT: In the 2009–2010 term, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide if it matters whether a criminal defense lawyer correctly counsels a client about the fact that the client faces deportation as a result of a guilty plea. Under prevailing constitutional norms in almost every jurisdiction, a lawyer does not have a duty to tell her client about many serious but “collateral” consequences of a guilty plea. Yet, in every jurisdiction that has considered the issue, that very same lawyer will run afoul of her duties if she affirmatively misrepresents a collateral consequence—every jurisdiction, that is, except Kentucky. The Supreme Court of Kentucky recently held that when there is no duty to warn about a consequence because it is collateral, misadvice about that same consequence is not a constitutional violation.
The collision of the collateral-consequences rule, which imposes no duty to warn, and the affirmative-misadvice exception, which imposes a duty to give accurate advice where a lawyer chooses to warn, leads to a perverse incentive structure that signals to defense lawyers (as well as to prosecutors and judges) that it is safest to say nothing at all about “collateral” matters. The Kentucky approach that the Supreme Court will review is equally troubling; it allows false information with no sanction or remedy. A cluttered and contradictory jurisprudence of informational rights in the guilty-plea process sits at this intersection of the collateral-consequences rule and affirmative-misadvice exception.
So-called collateral consequences often overshadow the direct penal sentences in criminal cases. In addition to deportation, courts categorize many other severe consequences as collateral, including involuntary civil commitment, sex-offender registration, and loss of the right to vote, to obtain professional licenses, and to receive public housing and benefits. These consequences touch upon every important area of a convicted person’s life—for the rest of his or her life. They also matter enormously in the United States, which has more than 600,000 individuals exiting the prison system and millions more getting criminal records each year. These individuals enter a society that is struggling to find ways to integrate them despite facing considerable obstacles.
Here is a link to today’s oral argument in Briscoe v. Virginia, the post Crawford and Melendez-Diaz case.
While I’m not convinced the decision will have much meaning in military cases, there are others who believe it will. So it does behoove us to monitor the case.
A military judge has decided to move the trial for one of three Navy SEALs accused in connection with the alleged assault of a suspected terrorist to Iraq.
Cmdr. Tierney Carlos, the trial judge for the court-martial of Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class (SEAL) Jonathan Elliot Keefe, has agreed with defense motions to move the April 6 trial to Camp Victory in Iraq so Keefe can face the alleged victim, Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the government sought to depose in lieu of a trial appearance.
“If he is available for a deposition, then he is available for trial,” Carlos said.
Here is an interesting piece relevant to a pending court-martial?
Tim King, The Fragging of American Officers: Historic Problems and Future Planning, Salem-News.com.
What we call fragging the British Navy called "Shot Rolling" after the practice of rolling a cannon ball across the deck for the purpose of injuring an officer. The methods may vary but the results are the same.
The Killeen Daily Herald reports that LTG Cone recently gave a briefing about “behavioral health care.”
The Army is behind Fort Hood’s effort to address behavioral health care issues and plans to institute it across the board, the post’s commander said Friday.
In response to incidents like the Nov. 5 shooting and an Army-wide increase in suicides, Fort Hood officials implemented the Behavioral Health Care Plan, a two-year process which is set to undergo periodic reviews and leverage the "whole of community" to accomplish tasks in several phases, Cone said. The goal is to make sure everyone who needs behavioral health care is reached and that its capabilities and capacities are right for Fort Hood’s soldiers, families and the civilian workforce.
Cone also talked about a Recovery and Resiliency Task Force, part of which includes a comprehensive approach to identify, diagnose and holistically treat those impacted by events like the Nov. 5 shooting at the post’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center where 13 were killed and more than 30 were wounded when a gunman opened fire.
During the briefing apparently the following was said about Major Hasan and his pending court-martial issues.
A few days ago I posted about the military rapper pending court-martial for his music.
It seems that he has a website and is now “promoting himself as the first hip hop president of the world, reports Coastal Courier.com. (Caution bad language.)
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog