Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
For those who served at Navy Appellate Defense during the 1990’s (or I suppose Appellate Government, or Code 40, or Code 20, or NMCCA, oops and CAAF), the case United States v. Zander, 48 M.J. 558(N.M. Ct. Crim. App. 1997), rev. denied 48 M.J. 18 (C.A.A.F. 1997), will mean something.
So, here are his most recent exploits.
Jeffrey Zander didn’t last long as the executive director of the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission (RREDC). He was hired in October 2008. By the following January, he had been placed on paid administrative leave. Four months later, in May of this year, he resigned, leaving behind a board of directors so cowed by the threat of litigation that most refuse to discuss the basics of his tenure — even with each other.
Who Was Jeff Zander? Unlike many, fake military attorney failed to reinvent himself in Humboldt County, by Hank Sims
For seven years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Capt. Jeffrey Zander served the United Stated Marine Corps as a judge advocate general — a lawyer who both prosecuted and defended soldiers in military court. He had risen to a prominent position in the corps, both on the strength of his legal work and his decorated military history. But that was before it all fell apart in 1994, when the Corps discovered that their rising star wasn’t actually an attorney — that he had actually stolen the identity of a member of the California bar to get fake legal credentials.
If recollection serves we had to take a look at over 200 cases. And as Mr. Sims’ article notes, at least 21 Marine appellants got some relief (for some a windfall).
For Navy JAG historians:
Did not Zander graduate first in his Naval Justice School class?
Did not Zander do a pretty good job in his cases, even when he wasn’t lying? (I seem to recollect that was the collective opinion of those of us who spent time taking another look at his cases.)
For a little more on Zander, see my good friend Gary Solis’s, First George S. Prugh Lecture in Military Legal History, 190/191 MIL. L. REV. 153, 165 (2006/2007).