Court-Martial Trial Practice BlogEarlier I posted an item on how to interpret email headers.
Here is an interesting article about the email headers — metadata.
Tresa Baldas, Metadata Grows in Legal Import, The National L. J., 26 January 2009.
Articles Posted in Uncategorized
Rights Advice
It occurs to me that most suspects interrogated by NCIS, CID, OSI, CGIS, have never seen the "rights' form they have you sign. So if you've not seen it in advance, it's harder to know what it is and how to complete it.
Here is an example, and it is pretty uniform across the Services although the example is Army.
Read it now, see where the check marks are, and exercise those rights.
Reservists on a court-martial panel?
As a result of the current National Guard and Reserve activations I, like many of my colleagues, find ourselves representing Guard or Reserve clients at court-martial. From time to time they ask if they can have Guard or Reservists on their Members Panel (jury). The answer is no they can't require Guard or Reserve panel members, unlike in administrative discharge boards.
Here though is an interesting challenge to the Canadian system of Panel Member selection.
CBC News, Lawyer challenges jury selection at N.S. soldier's court martial, 6 February 2009.
Legally thinking
Professor Solum is getting some play in the legal blogs over the last day or so. Professor Solum explains the interpretation-construction distinction, in 8 February 2009, Legal Theory Lexicon: Interpretation and Construction, post.
We can roughly define these two activities as follows:
* Interpretation: The activity of determining the linguistic meaning (or semantic content) of a legal text.
Another Suspect
The Blog of Legal Times, 6 February 2009, has this entry:
A seventh suspect was arrested and charged today for the murder of
Juwan Johnson, the U.S. Army sergeant who was beaten to death by other
Post-conviction access to DNA evidence
Lisa Demer, High court to hear Alaska man's DNA appeal, Anchorage Daily News, 7 February 2009.
Osborne was born and raised in South Carolina, graduated high school
there. He said he was accepted into The Citadel but it was too
Chances on appeal?
Not good? Is that the bottom line coming out of appellate results proffered by CAAFLog, Appellate Relief Data (8 February 2009)?
CAAFLog's own "research" of Air Force opinions yields an approximate 4.7% chance of getting relief, and an undetermined chance of meaningful relief within that number of cases.
CAAFLog also points to Major Jeffrey D. Lippert, Automatic Appeal Under UCMJ Article 66: Time for a Change, 182 MIL. L. REV. 1, 17 (2004).
It’s not that shocking.
Do you ever get the client or family member who want to sue NCIS, OSI, CID, CGIS, for what they did in an interrogation. Barring application of Feres (ha, some English major has to find something wrong with that).
Check out Smith v. Campbell, et. al., 295 Fed. Appx. 314, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 19085 (11th Cir. 2008), a case in which the police got Ms. Smith to confess to murder of a person who committed suicide. The police interrogation methods did not shock the conscience and were justified. Ms. Smith's 1983 case dismissed.
Technology and Crime Catching
NACDL has an interesting News Release, Civil Liberties, Religious Groups Seek to Require Warrants for Police GPS Surveillance.
A diverse group of civil liberties and religious organizations this week weighed in on the question of whether police need a warrant in order to conduct surveillance of personal vehicles by secretly attaching global positioning satellite (GPS) transmitters. The case, which is scheduled to be heard next month in New York’s highest court, has profound implications for the privacy rights of individuals and organizations.
The law is constantly adjusting to technology — the phone tap, the pen register, the thermal imaging device, are one of many items to get into your house. We've commented earlier about the use of cellphone tracking technology on where and how to find you. In each of the technology questions lies the issue of choice, or lack thereof.
Desertion with Intent.
The Army Court of Criminal Appeals has decided United States v. Lanier, No. 20080296 (A. Ct. Crim. App. 4 February 2009). The opinion has some current value, even though this is a guilty plea and adequacy of the providency case.
In this case the appellant was granted EML from duty in Iraq because his father had had a stroke. Appellant failed to return from his EML. He never asked for his EML to be extended or a humanitarian transfer. At trial he plead guilty to desertion with the intent to avoid hazardous service, in violation of Article 85(a)(2), UCMJ.
While deployed his squadron was engaged in frequently hostile operations. The unit suffered numerous combat casualties while deployed, including at least three deaths during the time appellant served with his unit in Iraq. At several points . . . , appellant reiterated that his duties in Iraq were dangerous and hazardous, with a significant risk of violence and injury due to hostile encounters. The stipulation of fact makes clear the hazardous character of the duty continued even after appellant quit his unit. Slip op. at 2.