UCMJ Tag Archives — Page 51 of 51 — Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog

Major Hasan’s religion a reason not to impose a death penalty?

November 10, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

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.

Major Hasan’s future lawyers

November 9, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

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.

Fingerprint evidence and testimony

August 1, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Tenth Circuit Joins Consensus On Admissibility Of Fingerprint Evidence

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.