Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
The CGCCA has issued a per curiam opinion in United States v. Sapp., a SPCM tried at U.S.C.G. Training Center Yorktown.
Before this court, Appellant has assigned two errors: (1) This court should consider the unreasonable and unexplained post-trial delay in determining the sentence that should be approved under Article 66(c); and (2) the promulgating order contains three errors. We grant sentence relief for post-trial delay and otherwise affirm. . . .
Notable delays in post-trial processing are found in the fifty-nine days apparently taken by the military judge to authenticate the record, the seventy-seven days taken after receipt of the authenticated record to produce the SJAR and send it to defense counsel, and the twenty-eight days between Convening Authority action and sending the record to Headquarters. The Memorandum forwarding the record gives no meaningful explanation for these delays, attributing them only to “administrative processing.”