Court-Martial Trial Practice

Air Force Times reports a case of reach for the stars:

Allan Poulin Jr. dreamed of flying a fighter and landed a job interview with an F-16 reserve unit. The squadron leadership didn’t want him. The wing commander offered Poulin a job anyway.

Poulin struggled at Officer Training School. The school commander signed off on his dismissal. A one-star ordered him reinstated.

It’s over.

This years series of presentations was much better than previous years.  The topics and speakers were much more relevant, while being sufficiently edgy at the same time.  Gone are the days where a “prof” from TJAGSA would go through slides reporting the school’s view of “this years” military appellate case law.  Such predictable “modules” could be stultifying.  And removing rote school teaching from the agenda is not a bad thing when you consider the professional makeup of the likely audience.  However, going too far the other way to discuss books about submarine recovery/searches risks irrelevance.

General Chiarelli was among the best of the speakers.  He had quite a bit of interest to talk about.  But the under-stated points he made were about a commanders relationship to her lawyer and vice-versa.  His relevant points:

The court is gradually putting the handouts up on the website.

in the civilian courts.  Sentencing Law & Policy reports:

The Ninth Circuit has an interesting opinion concerning the withdrawal of pleas in US v. Bonilla, No. 09-10307 (9th Cir. March 11, 2011) (available here), which relies heavily on the Supreme Court’s important Sixth Amendment ruling last Term in Padilla v. Kentucky.  Here is how the Bonilla opinion begins:

Jose Hernandez Bonilla, Jr. appeals the district court’s denial of his pre-sentencing motion to withdraw his guilty plea.  Bonilla pled guilty to possession of an unregistered firearm and to being a felon in possession of a firearm.  He has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States for over thirty years; his wife and two children are all U.S. citizens.  When shortly after he had entered his plea Bonilla was for the first time informed that he would be deported on the basis of his plea, he moved to withdraw it, asserting that he would not have pled had he known about the immigration consequences.  We hold that the district court’s denial of Bonilla’s motion to withdraw his plea was an abuse of its discretion.

Huffington Post reports that the USNA has expelled three for synthetic spice related charges, for a total of 11 dismissals in 2011.

Air Force Times reports further action on the military draw down:  12 Article 15’s for involvement with “spice.”

According to Foreign Policy:

Fox News reports:

The Army announced Thursday it will punish nine officers in connection with the Fort Hoodshootings for "leadership failures relating to the career of Maj. Hasan."

MSNBC has this piece.

The Marine Corps says it has issued a suicide-proof sleeping garment to the imprisoned Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks.

Professor Friedman reminds us that we have other confrontation issues beyond the non-testifying witness concern.

Focus on Crawford-related issues should not obscure the fact that many significant Confrontation Clause questions concern the scope of the accused’s right to cross-examine a witness who actually testifies at trial. Adam Liptak of the New York Times has alerted me to an interesting decision issued yesterday by the Second Circuit in United States v. Treacy.

The Second Circuit held that the limitations on cross- examination were improper. It declared that

federalevidence.com reports on:

In trial for mail fraud and theft from a program receiving federal funds, trial court error in permitting the prosecutor to cross-examine the defendant state legislator as to her opinion of whether other witnesses were lying and lacked veracity, however error did not rise to plain error; joining consensus of six other circuits on the impropriety of requiring a defendant to testify as to the veracity of other witnesses, in United States v. Schmitz, __ F.3d __ (11th Cir. March 4, 2011) (No. 09-14452)

The Eleventh Circuit joined the First, Second, Third, Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits in finding that a prosecutor’s questions on cross-examinaton of the defendant as to whether other witnesses — specifically those telling a different story than the defendant — are lying. The reasons for this limit on cross-examination are diverse, but carefully explained in a recent case by the Eleventh Circuit.