Court-Martial Trial Practice

Navy Times reports the Honors “debate.”

In one view, echoed online by thousands of angry supporters, the risqué aspect of Capt. Owen Honors’ videos simply reflected shipboard life and were funny escapes from the often-tedious routine of deployment; offended crew members of the carrier Enterprise could simply look away. Honors was an excellent leader, they say, and became the victim of political correctness gone amok.

Others, including several former commanding officers who spoke with Navy Times, largely disagree. Honors should have realized how far he’d climbed out on a limb, regardless of whether those videos would be viewed outside the ship.

The aim of this study was to model various social and cognitive processes believed to be associated with true and false confessions by exploring the link between investigative biases [1] and what occurs in the interrogation room. Using the Russano et al. (Psychol Sci 16:481–486, 2005) paradigm, this study explored how perceptions of guilt influenced the frequency and type of interrogation tactics used, suspect’s perceptions of the interrogation process, the likelihood of confession, and investigator’s resulting perceptions of culpability. Results suggested that investigator bias led to the increased use of minimization tactics and thereby increased the likelihood of false confessions by innocent participants. In contrast, the manipulation of investigator bias had no direct or indirect influence on guilty participants. These findings confirm the important role of investigator bias and improve our understanding of the decision-making process associated with true and false confessions.

Fadia M. Narchet, Christian A. Meissner and Melissa B. Russano, Modeling the Influence of Investigator Bias on the Elicitation of True and False Confessions, J. Law & Human Behavior (Dec. 2010).

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The Navy-Marine Corps Trial Judiciary page links to the docket for WESTPAC (which includes Okinawa and Yoko).  However, to get the Navy docket at Pearl Harbor you will find it at the Brig website.  Interestingly the Navy appears to have tried four cases since 29 November, and one of those appears to have been a two-day Article 86 summary court-martial, and one was a Coastie.

In a number of cases Judge Wiss made the statement about the CCA’s that

"[T]here are some places where even ‘the proverbial 800-pound gorilla’ is not free to roam."

See e.g., United States v. Parker, 36 M.J. 269, 273 (C.M.A. 1993)(citing United States v. Bethea, 22 U.S.C.M.A. 223, 46 C.M.R. 223 (1973)) (Wiss, J. concurring).

Coastline Courier reports:

The start date in a Fort Stewart soldier’s death penalty case has been delayed, to give the defense time to have their experts examine additional evidence and to accommodate witnesses coming to the United States from Iraq.

Army Times reports a change in status:

Military.com reports:

The Navy says a second officer has been transferred from his job pending investigation into the showing of lewd videos on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

Rear Adm. Dennis Moynihan, a Navy spokesman, said Thursday that Rear Adm. Lawrence Rice has been transferred out of his job at Joint Forces Command. His retirement planned for Feb. 1 is being delayed.

United States v. Jones.

A convoluted case about the accused’s ability to review CP images in preparation for his providence inquiry.

We conclude that the denial of the requests to review
evidence under the circumstances of this case did not
violate the Sixth Amendment because Appellant did not seek
to review the evidence to prepare a defense, and that
Appellant’s unconditional guilty plea waived appellate
review of the denial of his discovery requests under Rule
for Courts-Martial (R.C.M.) 701.  And we agree with the
NMCCA that, considering the stipulation of fact in
conjunction with Appellant’s providence inquiry, there was
no substantial basis in law or fact for the military judge
to reject Appellant’s guilty plea in this case.  Jones,
2009 CCA LEXIS 356, at *21, 2009 WL 3435920, at *7.

As federalevidencereview notes:

[A]llowing a court to take judicial notice often presents a proponent of its use with a useful short-cut in proof of adjudicative facts. But it is important to draw a distinction between the fact noticed and the logical conclusion to be drawn from the fact.

From time to time you will see a prosecutor want to have judicial notice of facts, but include in their motion their argument or conclusions.  Remember that there must be a foundation for the notice offered at the time of the request.  For example a calendar for judicial notice that a date fell on a particular day of the week, or a copy of the regulation or statute.