It took how long?!%#@ Well, in United States v. Gonzalez, a Coast Guard general court-martial, the sentence was announced on 27 July 2011. The case did not get docketed with the CGCCA until 19 December 2014. That means a total of 1,241 days went by before the appellate court began…
(W)e seem to be on an endless quest to unmask the deceiver. This is easier said than done. The research is surprising. Even the professionals aren’t very good at catching people in a lie. When we do catch a lie, it’s often not for the reasons you may expect. There…
Of 100 studies published in top-ranking journals in 2008, 75% of social psychology experiments and half of cognitive studies failed the replication test. So says a report in The Guardian. Of 100 studies published in top-ranking journals in 2008, 75% of social psychology experiments and half of cognitive studies failed…
We do a lot of military sexual assault cases with alcohol involved. It is not unusual for a complaining witness to claim they were drunk, blacked out and didn’t consent. First, if blacked out they can’t know they didn’t consent–it’s impossible if they were blacked out, rather than them exhibiting a…
Military and civilian counsel military cases is bound by Service rules of professional responsibility as well as their bar. The military RPC are based on the ABA Model Rules. Thus, ABA interpretations can be meaningful and helpful. What do you do with the client file when the case is over?…
Several relevant items for you this weekend. Orin Kerr has this post at The Volokh Conspiracy. In part: Computer searches usually happen in two stages. Agents take the computer, make a mirror image copy of its hard drive on a government storage device, and then search the image. Officers do this…
The NMCCA has issued an interesting published opinion on a government appeal. United States v. Rios. From the opinion. The appellee is currently facing trial by special court-martial on numerous charges regarding larceny from the Marine Corps Exchange (MCX) on Camp Pendleton, California. He is alleged to have conspired with…
I posted the other day about Latorre v. FCI Elkton. A colleague who’s thoughts I value very highly had some things to say. Unfortunately LaTorrehandled his matter pro se and didn’t do it well, and so, got the “canned” decision that circulated some years back out of the federal judicial center.…
Worth-the-read is A PRELIMINARY DRAFT OF Proposed Amendments to the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence, is the source for the ABA article I just posted about ancient documents. There is another proposal in the Draft relevant to technology. The drafters are suggesting changing FRE 902,…
The abundance of electronically stored documents is spurring a committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference to propose abolishing the “ancient documents” rule. The rule—803(16) of the Federal Rules of Evidence—allows the admission of documents that would usually be banned as hearsay if the documents are at least 20 years old…