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United States v. Stefan is a 5-0 opinion written by Judge Stucky.  In a nutshell:

We granted review to determine whether the chief of  military justice was disqualified from preparing the addendum to the staff judge advocate’s recommendation (SJAR) because, before trial, she had caused the charges to be served on the accused.   We hold that she was disqualified under Article 6(c), Uniform
Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), 10 U.S.C. § 806(c) (2006), and Rule for Courts-Martial (R.C.M.) 1106(b), but Appellant was not prejudiced.

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Waive it or raise it at work – and at a court-martial under the UCMJ.

Judge Ed Carnes for the Eleventh Circuit in United States v. Rodriguez, No. 08-16696, Dec. 22, 2010:

This case poses the question of whether there is a vindictive judge or cowardly counsel exception to the contemporaneous objection rule. Unless there is such an exception, the only issue that the appellant is pressing on appeal is barred for failure to object because she cannot meet the requirements of the plain error rule. Disagreeing with the Second Circuit, we hold that the possibility a judge may be unhappy with an objection does not excuse the failure to make it.

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There is an increasing disconnect between the “birther” movement and LTC Lakin’s case.  Hopefully that “wishy washy” attorney representing him will make that clear when pleading for mercy.

The Post&Email has been following LTC Lakin and most of the other presidential eligibility cases.  Recently they ran a piece about some “demonstrations” in Arizona in favor of Congress stepping in to stop the court-martial.  A recent comment had this to say which may qualify for a humor in military justice posting.

I very much hope that Miss Taitz is going to attend and somehow convinces LTC Lakin to fire that wishy washy attorney Neal Puckett and let her take over the case. I have listened to Puckett on a couple of radio shows and he is already giving up and saying Lakin will be found guilty. He will not even say that Obama is not eligible. Why Lakin hooked up with this loser I will never know. He must be getting bad advice from Ms Hemenway or Gen. Vallalley.

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In September 2010, USA Today published the first of several articles about prosecutorial misconduct.  In that article they discussed Nino Lyons who was convicted in a case where the prosecutors:

covered up evidence that could have discredited many of Lyons’ accusers. They never revealed that a convict who claimed to have purchased hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Lyons struggled even to identify his photograph. And they hid the fact that prosecutors had promised to let others out of prison early in exchange for their cooperation.

As we’ve discussed both types of information must be disclosed.

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