Court-Martial Trial Practice

Navy Times reports:  The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is back in place for the time being, with one major caveat: the government is not allowed to investigate, penalize or discharge anyone who is openly gay. A San Francisco federal appeals court ordered the military to temporarily continue the controversial policy in an order late Friday, the court’s response to a request from the Obama administration.

Navy Times reports:   Should a service member convicted and sentenced in civilian court be tried on the same charges at court-martial?  In a couple of weeks, Rodney Williams will find out.  It’s not double jeopardy; at court-martial, Chief Information Systems Technician (SW) Rodney Williams would face federal rather than state charges. But the Navy, dissatisfied that a Virginia court found the chief petty officer guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the off-base fatal shooting of a former sailor for which he was charged with first-degree murder,

Digital Journal reports:  ‘The Court Martial (sic) Of Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Richard Schaller’.”  Xlibris, the print-on-demand self-publishing services provider, announced today the release of The Court Martial Of Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Richard Schaller. Authored by Richard Schaller, this book is a comprehensive detailing of the occurrences during the federal trial of the longest white-collar criminal investigation in US Air Force history and its devastating impact on the war on terror.

Navy Times reports that:  The commanding officer of a submarine tender based in Diego Garcia was fired Friday after his ship struck a channel buoy in June, the Navy said Friday. He is the 13th CO fired this year.

Politico reports:  The commander of the Marine base where Wikileaks suspect Pvt. Bradley Manning was jailed for nearly 10 months ordered an inquiry into his treatment and then overruled one of the investigator’s findings, Marine Corps documents obtained by POLITICO show.

There’s an interesting piece on Salon about how the Manning “story” got uncovered and . . .   The piece is actually about the ethics of some of the reporting about the case, in particular by Wired, and some effort to deconstruct the case against Manning.

Here is an interesting tidbit that apparently has not been publically released until now.

Just consider some of what Wired concealed.  First we have this, from very early on in the first Manning-Lamo conversation (emphasis added):

Thanks to HowAppealing, there is an interesting Fourth Circuit case involving whether:

military colleagues violated Army National Guard colonel’s Fourth Amendment rights by intercepting, reading, and forwarding his e-mails while he was deployed in Kuwait.

Navy Times reports:  The executive officer of the amphibious transport dock Green Bay, currently on deployment and operating in the Arabian Sea, was fired Wednesday after being accused of misconduct, the Navy said.  Look’s like he got Mast first.

Political Wires reports: 

A federal judge has said that "injustice" was done to a former Navy officer who was wrongly convicted with the help of a discredited military lab analyst, but he also concluded that the court can’t do anything about it.

House had been a highly regarded officer, tapped as executive assistant to the Navy’s surgeon general. His Navy career collapsed, though, after he and two other officers were charged with sexually assaulting a female sailor. The officers were acquitted of assault but convicted on lesser charges, including conduct unbecoming an officer.

Stars & Stripes reports:  The number of reports of family violence within the military, which had been in decline over several years, has been rising over the last two years, and reports of abused children and spouses increased significantly last year, a report by the Defense Department’s Family Advocacy Program shows.  But what it means — more people reporting who had kept silent in the past, better record-keeping or more people in the military abusing their spouses and children — is unknown.

Stars & Stripes reports:  If you want more explanation about the military’s troubles in treating troops with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress, read no further than two recent but largely unnoticed reports from the Government Accountability Office.  This is of interest because many of our clients have or purport to have these issues as an element of the disciplinary status.  It turns out the Pentagon’s solution to the problems is an organization plagued by weak leadership, uncertain priorities and a money trail so tangled that even the GAO’s investigators couldn’t sort it out.

Outside the Wire has a note about Army tattoo policies.

Here, courtesy of the great Professor Berman, is a case from Ohio, ruling that a state sex-offender registration law intended to comply with SORNA is unconstitutional under the state constitution.

In a ruling with potential national implications even though based only on state law, the Ohio Supreme Court this morning in a 5-2 opinion decided that the state’s new sex offender registration requirements were punitive and thus could not, as a matter of Ohio state constitutional law, be applied to offenders who committed offenses before this new registration law was put into effect. The majority ruling in Ohio v. Williams, No. 2011-OHIO-3374 (Ohio July 13, 2011) (available here)[.]

It’s an ex-post facto case, which generally has not resulted in reversal in federal courts under the federal constitution.

The Confrontation Clause states that

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to be confronted with the witnesses against him…

But does the Confrontation Clause cover only analytical and conclusory statements, or does it also cover "routine and descriptive and objectively ascertained and reliable facts?" According to a Maryland trial court, it only covers the former. According to the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland in its recent opinion in Green v. State, 2011 WL 2578562 (Md.App. 2011), it also covers the latter.