The Real Cost Of Having Commanders In Charge Of Military Justice This article has appeared in Task & Purpose as a result of United States v. Woods, decided by the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on 18 June 2015. Incredibly, a senior naval officer was appointed to be the…
Protect Our Defenders (POD) has this to say about the recent vote on Sen. Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act. Last week, 50 U.S. Senators stood with survivors and voted for Senator Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA). For two years in a row, a majority of the Senate has told…
As a defense counsel, I’m always looking for ways in which the prosecutor has opened the door to relevant evidence, but which for some reasons has been excluded or can’t be offered. MRE 412 comes to mind, as happened to me at trial in United States v. Savala, 70 M.J.…
Here is a link to the MCM changes effective 17 June 2015.
A former client directed me to the Air Force Reporter, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2015). In reading about an aspect of his case, my eyes rolled down to this. It is on page 50. CASE 2 Prior to a court-martial, a Special Victims’ Counsel (SVC) advised a client that the…
We often hear of prosecution misconduct going unchallenged or undisciplined. Two events this week are noteworthy though in efforts to hold prosecutors accountable. Armstrong v. Daily, et. al., is a case out of the Seventh. The M-W Journal Sentinal extracts this: He brought a civil rights suit against the prosecutor…
The Georgia Supreme Court extends Padilla In Alexander v. State, decided on May 11, the Georgia Supreme Court agreed that a failure to advise on parole issues from a guilty plea was ineffective assistance under Strickland v. Washington. Military lawyers know there are two specific areas they must ensure adequate advice…
Listen up: “Every occasion of a proved false allegation has an insidious effect on public confidence, sometimes allowing doubts to creep into when one shouldn’t exist.” Said the judge on sentencing. That’s right, the failure to hold people accountable for false accusations harms true victims. Col Christensen of POD says…
Ask the prosecutor in this case. In re Kline. Military prosecutors are bound by Service rules of professional responsibility. Those rules are based on the ABA Model Rules. The ethical rule regarding prosecutorial disclosure in the District of Columbia, as in most states, incorporated the “tends to negate guilt” standard…
1 May 2015 saw the release of a number of reports and memorandums regarding military sexual assault. Some initial takeaways (which in my view certain people are either deliberately ignoring or misreporting). No POD, the conviction rate is not 5%– the conviction rate is 67% for penetrative offenses, and 84%…