Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
The Army has charged an Illinois National Guardsman in Afghanistan with possession of child and adult pornography, and his family has come to his defense, arguing that he was the target of a personal vendetta.
Army Times reports. This is an ongoing case that started because the kids mother sent him a photograph of a child. In the photograph you can apparently see her crack.
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Thanks to CAAFLog here is a link to an article about the Walker retrial at Quantico. (Unofficially, I’m told the case may be completed by 5 February.)
A former Marine sitting on death row for the last 16-years after being convicted of murdering two colleagues in 1992 may be re-sentenced to life in the brig after an appellate court set aside his initial death sentence last year.
Marine Corps Times reports.
They have a panel of 13 members. They began with 15 members initially assigned to the panel. After the voir dire process they had excused a total of 28 prospective members for one reason or another. Military law requires a minimum of 12 members in a death penalty case. And they must be unanimous in voting for death. Walker already has an approved premeditated murder conviction. So the issue is whether he will be sentenced for the one already approved, or will he be convicted of the second murder and thus sentenced for two.
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The results of a second investigation into the deadly battle at Wanat, Afghanistan, in 2008 could lead to action being taken against Army leaders involved in the operation that has come to symbolize the perils of underestimating enemy and terrain in the Southwest Asian nation.
Honolulu Advertizer reports.
I’m losing the battle on the increasing informality of dress in courts-martial. Even the Marines have now made chucks the uniform for court. But, so far we haven’t gone this far:
At one point yesterday, Colonel Mario Dutil, the chief military judge of the Canadian Forces, asked crossly, "Why not a Tilley hat, cargo pants and a Columbia shirt?"
Col. Dutil was hearing the first of a slew of pre-trial motions in the second-degree murder prosecution of Captain Robert Semrau, the soldier charged in the Oct. 19, 2008, death of a severely wounded Talib.
Yet just as in the civilian world criminal trials can descend into flights of goofiness, so can military ones, and that is pretty much what happened here yesterday.
The first on the defence list of seven motions was an application to vary the court-martial administrative instruction about dress, that is, what the participants should wear in court.
The Globe & Mail reports.