CNN Justice reports:
Toobin: Cabinet members may end up negotiating which legal system will try Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in last week’s mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Tuesday.
CNN: Would the charges be the same in either case?
Military.com reports:
A Marine reservist accused of attacking a Greek Orthodox priest with a tire iron after apparently calling him a terrorist was actually defending himself after being sexually attacked by the cleric, his defense attorney said Tuesday.
Tampa Police report offered a far different account, saying Marakis was lost when he followed Bruce into the garage and asked for help, then was struck with the tire iron and chased several blocks. When officers arrived, Bruce called Marakis a terrorist and said the priest had shouted "Allahu akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great."
| California man is facing a criminal charge for wearing numerous Navy medals despite the fact he never served in the military, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. A witness “saw Burton wearing a Marine Corps uniform displaying the rank of lieutenant colonel, along with the Navy Cross, the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star[.] |
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The azstarnet reports:
A Davis-Monthan airman was acquitted Tuesday in the slaying of another airman in 2007 during a south-side house party, an official said.
A court martial panel found Senior Airman Philip Andre Howard not guilty of the June 2007 death of Airman 1st Class Brian Santos, said Capt. Stacie Shafran, a D-M spokeswoman.
The LifeSiteNews.com is reporting:
While Hasan recovers at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, the Army is readying itself to charge Hasan in military court, where he could face the death-penalty. But prosecutors will have to charge Hasan under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which was amended in 2004 to include “Laci and Conner’s Law” or the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA).
The UVVA requires that the justice system charge the perpetrator of a violent crime against a pregnant woman, resulting in death or bodily injury to her unborn child, with committing a separate and distinct offence against the mother’s unborn child. The law specifies that the punishment applied for the injury or death of the child must be the same – with the exception of the death penalty – as if “that injury or death occurred to the unborn child’s mother.”
Gawker, an unusual blog has information about Major Hasan’s application for a concealed carry permit in VA. Fort Hood, like all military installations, will have a regulation concerning the possession and carrying of weapons on post. Usually the weapon has to be stored in the Armory.
Here is the complete application. The blog also notes:
Before 1995, according to the Roanoke County Circuit Court clerk’s office, Virginia law required a psychiatric evaluation and documented explanation for why a resident needed to carry a concealed handgun. But by the time Hasan applied in October 1995, all that was required was a criminal background check and certification of a gun safety course. For some reason proof of having completed individual infantry training in the U.S. Army (next slide) was not enough for the Commonwealth of Virginia when it came to gun safety and Hasan had to take an NRA course as well.
Will Major Hasan successfully use PTSD as a defense, or will it at least become a mitigating factor to be considered. If the trial is at Fort Hood, as seems likely at the moment, many of the Members (jury) panel will already have quite a bit of extra-judicial information.
Here are some links relating to secondary traumatization.
Zimmering, Munroe, & Gulliver, Secondary Traumatization in Mental Health Care Providers, 20 Psych. Times (Apr. 2003).
I’m not posting much at the moment on the Fort Hood tragedy. People can follow the news as easily as I can. However, this article by Will Heaven in the (U.K.) Daily Telegraph did raise an eyebrow.
Fort Hood shooting: the death penalty would make Nidal Malik Hasan an Islamic martyr
The implication of the article is that commanders should make a political decision that seeking the death penalty is not a good idea. Equally I suppose an argument could be made that the defense should make the geo-politics an issue because anything that might be “mitigating” must be considered when seeking to impose the death penalty. I’m not an advocate of the death penalty for various reasons; a political decision is not one of the reasons I’m against the death penalty though.
Anyone who knows anything about death penalty cases knows that allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) will figure significantly in an appeal. It’s given that no matter how hard they work they’ll be accused of incompetence.
Today, the Supreme Court summarily reversed a Sixth Circuit case in which the circuit court found IAC. Here is a link to the court’s order in Bobby v. Van Hook. It is of interest because the court was critical of the circuit courts reliance on the ABA Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases. Here are the Guidelines.
/tip SCOTUSBlog.
In conspiracy to possess marijuana and illegal firearm possession prosecution, expert fingerprint testimony identifying the defendant’s thumb print on guns and ammunition was admissible under FRE 702 and Daubert even though the defendant raised “questions regarding whether fingerprint analysis can be considered truly scientific in an intellectual, abstract sense”; circuit extensively explored the current argument regarding admissibility of fingerprint evidence under the ACE-V (analysis, comparison, evaluation, and verification) process for determining matches applying the Daubert admissibility factors, in United States v. Baines, __ F.3d __ (10th Cir. July 20, 2009) (No. 08-2098).
FederalEvidenceBlog also accounts for the other circuits on how they rule on such issues.
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog