Attorney John Galligan says Maj. Nidal Hasan has excessive restrictions — including a rule barring any visitors when his attorneys are in his hospital room.
Air Force Times reports.
This same rule operates at the pretrial confinement facility. The Brigs are pretty good about letting counsel in to visit for “legal visits.” But there are restrictions on mingling of family visits and “professional” visits.
Dear Representative Burton,
Thank you for your letter expressing your and your colleagues concern regarding the pending Courts-martial of Petty Officers Huertas, McCabe, and Keefe. I understand your interest in these cases and can assure you that I am committed to protecting the rights of the Sailors who have been accused.
Regrettably it appears that your perception of the incident is based upon incomplete and factually inaccurate press coverage. Despite what has been reported, these allegations are not founded solely on the word of the detainee, but rather, were initially raised by other U.S. service members. Additionally, the alleged injuries did not occur during actions on the objective, as is also being widely reported in the media. A medical examination conducted at the time the detainee was turned over to U.S. forces determined that his alleged injuries were inflicted several hours after the operation had ended, and while in the custody and care of the U.S. at Camp Schweidler’s detainee holding facility.
Should military veterans get a break when they are sentenced for crimes?
Asks a piece in the Wall Street Journal. This is interesting in light of some discussion on CAAFLog about sentencing in court-martial and sentence ranges under the UCMJ. Seems some civilian judges are more interested in giving a sentence based on the whole person and individualized rather than a set amount.
“We dump all kinds of money to get soldiers over there and train them to kill, but we don’t do anything to reintegrate them into our society,” says John L. Kane, a federal judge in Denver.
Army Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland has responded to a letter that challenges the handling of a case against three Navy SEALs accused of mishandling a suspected terrorist.
In the Dec. 15 letter, addressed to Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., Cleveland essentially refuses to drop the charges against the three men."While the assault and resulting injury to the detainee were relatively minor, the more disconcerting allegations are those related to the sailor’s attempts to cover-up the incident," said Cleveland, who writes that this appears to be an attempt to influence the testimony of a witness.
Cleveland writes that the "alleged allegations are not founded solely on the word of the detainee, but rather, were initially raised by other U.S. service members."
State Department investigators say Chief Engineman (SW) Arturo Puente at Jacksonville’s Mayport Naval Station has used a false name for the last 22 years while working at U.S. embassies in Rome and Panama, according to the Florida Times-Union newspaper.
Navy Times reports. No indications of a court-martial or any UCMJ violations.
Airman 1st Class Corey Hernandez pulled the trigger. Nothing was supposed to happen, except the metallic click of the hammer striking the firing pin.
Instead, the pistol fired.
Until Dec. 10, when the 23-year-old Garcia died, the Air Force had not had any reported incidents of airmen playing Trust.
Jury instructions are too often so poorly written that even the most intelligent juror cannot understand them. That’s a serious problem. So how can we make jury instructions more understandable? Prof. Peter Tiersma offers many concrete suggestions in this article, available for free download on SSRN. If you’re a trial judge or trial lawyer, you need to read it.
From the (new) legal writer blog. Instructions given in a court-martial prosecution under the UCMJ can at times be confusing. Certainly the current practice in a court-martial of reading the instructions and then giving a written copy does help somewhat to alleviate potential issues from reading only.
A counterterror airstrike in Yemen that may have targeted Anwar al-Awlaki, the extremist cleric linked to Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, could raise new questions about whether Hasan’s rampage in Killeen, Texas, on Nov. 5 was the act of a lone wolf or part of a conspiracy.
Reports the Christian Science Monitor.
With a seasonal title, Prof. Colin Miller reminds us of a particular caution when seeking to admit statements of a co-conspirator – the statements have to be made before the crime is committed. There should be the same impact in a court-martial prosecution under the UCMJ.
Prof. Colin Miller, Later On, We’ll Conspire: Court Of Appeals Of Indiana Notes That Statements After A Crime Has Been Perpetrated Cannot Be Co-Conspirator Admissions.
As the text of this Rule [Indiana/Fed./Mil. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(E)] makes clear, the Rule only covers statements made during the course of (and in furtherance of) a conspiracy and does not cover statements made after the conspiracy has been effected and the crime has been perpetrated.
I have done several posts on this blog (here, here, here, here, and here) about the inaccuracy of regular and cross-racial eyewitness identifications and whether expert testimony about this inaccuracy should be allowed. My general sense is that most courts allow such expert testimony although a decent number of courts, such as the Eleventh Circuit and Minnesota courts, preclude it. Now, based upon the recent opinion of the Supreme Court of Utah in State v. Clopten, 2009 WL 4877404 (Utah 2009), we can add Utah courts to the list of courts that allow such expert testimony.
Blogs Prof. Collin Miller. Note that the Military Judges’ Benchbook already has an instruction about cross-racial identification for use at court-martial. Prof. Miller:
"'[T]he vagaries of eyewitness identification are well known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification.’"…Decades of study, both before and particularly after Long, have established that eyewitnesses are prone to identifying the wrong person as the perpetrator of a crime, particularly when certain factors are present….For example, people identify members of their own race with greater accuracy than they do members of a different race….In addition, accuracy is significantly affected by factors such as the amount of time the culprit was in view, lighting conditions, use of a disguise, distinctiveness of the culprit’s appearance, and the presence of a weapon or other distractions….Moreover, there is little doubt that juries are generally unaware of these deficiencies in human perception and memory and thus give great weight to eyewitness identifications….Indeed, juries seemed to be swayed the most by the confidence of an eyewitness, even though such confidence correlates only weakly with accuracy….That the empirical data is conclusive on these matters is not disputed by either party in this case and has not been questioned by this court in the decisions that followed Long.
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog