Drug ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.
I’ve argued often that the military drug policy is broken: Alcohol the number one drug of abuse — a killer, a cause of injury, and a cause of physical damage and loss of military property — goes relatively free from regulation and consequence, military pharmacies distribute millions of prescription drugs and put the people back to work, and the one time user of marijuana goes to jail. Now this.
Here is information concerning President Obama’s recent comments on DADT.
Remarks by President Obama at the LGBT Pride Month White House Reception, June 29, 2009.
Here is Volokh Conspiracy’s multiple choice test on the comments.
Here is part of Professor Colin Miller’s recent post about search incident to arrest after Arizona v. Gant was decided by the Supreme Court. This is a good review of the issue.
[Quote] In 1969, the Supreme Court established the boundaries of proper search incident to a lawful arrest in California v. Chimel, 395 U.S. 752 (1969). According to the Court,
When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape….And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule.
This seems to be the another post-Rodriguez case in which a petition has been denied.
No. 09-0030/AR. U.S. v. Josh R. RITTENHOUSE. CCA 20050411. On consideration of the petition for grant of review of the decision of the United States Army Court of Criminal Appeals and in light of United States v. Rodriguez, 67 M.J. 110 (C.A.A.F. 2009), said petition is dismissed as untimely filed.
EFFRON, Chief Judge (concurring in the result):
Here is a link to CAAF’s new decision in United States v. Chatfield. The opinion is valuable for three issues: what is custody, what is coercion, and a reminder to consider jointness of military and civilian investigations.
When does a superiors words of actions create a custodial interrogation situation or make a person’s waiver of rights coercive?
[T]he Supreme Court defined custodial interrogation as “questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.” To answer the question whether an accused is in custody for purposes of Miranda, we consider “all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation” to determine “how a reasonable person in the position of the [accused] would gauge the breadth of his or her freedom of action.” Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 322, 325 (1994) (quotation marks omitted).
Here’s Stan Walters on the issue:
We need to start recording ALL interrogations, stop the abuse of the criminal justice system, and ALWAYS blame the cop first if the bad guy confesses, gets convicted or if Grandma gets tazed because she failed to follow a lawful order and resisted arrest. Juries and ESPECIALLY the public needs to see what really goes on during an interrogation.
June 20, 2009 Agence France-Presse |
Nearly twice as many US Army Soldiers today compared to six years ago are either alcoholic or engage in damaging behavior such as binge drinking, according to army statistics.
Data shows more than 11 Soldiers per 1,000 were diagnosed as suffering from alcoholism or alcohol abuse problems in the first six months of this year, a jump from 6.1 per 1,000 in 2003. |
If you’re a lawyer looking for first-rate appellate CLE, then please consider registering for the DRI Appellate Advocacy Seminar, to be held November 5–6, 2009 in La Jolla, California (near San Diego), at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines.
A reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune will have to testify as a defense witness in a court-martial, a military judge ruled Monday.
In his 12-page ruling military judge Cmdr. Kevin O’Neill rejected Rogers’s attempts to assert a First Amendment-based reporter’s privilege and protection under the California shield law. O’Neill said he did not need to answer the question of whether a First Amendment-based privilege exists in military court or whether California’s shield law applies because the privilege would be overcome anyway in this case.
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog