Professor Freidman the Great Confrontationist has posted the Petitioner’s Brief and Appendix for Williams v. Illinois. This case is one of several we should be following that will come from the Supremes. This issue presented in Williams is: Whether the prosecution violates the Confrontation Clause when it presents, pursuant to…
Wuterich v. United States.
Police came to do a knock-and-talk, and defendant objected to a search of the bedroom he shared with his wife. When he objected, the police took the wife and her mother outside to talk about consent. The district court’s effort to find a hierarchy of privacy interests in the home…
I posted about eyewitness testimony the other day. Here is an article to read. Sandra Guerra Thompson (University of Houston Law Center) has postedJudicial Gatekeeping of Police-Generated Witness Testimony on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This article urges a fundamental change in the administration of criminal justice. It calls for…
Yes, this season appears to be the one to address a number of lingering or ambiguous (or not so ambiguous) issues about Mil. R. Evid. 412. So, it seems apt that the last opinion for this season is out: United States v. Ellenbrock. We granted review to determine whether the…
United States v. Sweeney. This is a Crawford-Blazier case. In the Blazier cases, we set forth a straightforward path for analyzing the admissibility of drug testing reports under the Confrontation Clause. . . . we hold that Appellant was denied his right to confront the witnesses against him, and we…
The CAAF recently decided United States v. Baker, an Article 62 appeal of an MJ’s ruling suppressing an identification. There is quite a bit of legitimate research indicating that even 12 bishops might give an erroneous identification of a suspect either in witness interviews or through an out of court…
DOD Live has a piece from the Surgeon General of the Navy about “spice.” The Navy’s zero tolerance policy for drug abuse includes possession of substances or designated products that contain synthetic cannabinoid compounds, including Spice, fake marijuana or fake pot, herbal incense or potpourri, salvia divinorum, bath salts, Skunk,…
Air Force Times reports: More than half of the airmen tested for spice have had positive results, according to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. Military tests for the synthetic form of cannabis began in March, the same month the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a one-year ban on five chemicals…
On 8 November 2011, the U. S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a case with application to military prosecutions. Here is the SCOTUSBlog information for Smith v. Cain, No. 10-8145. Issue: 1) Whether there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of Smith’s trial would have been different…