Here is a piece from Kitsap Sun:
A doctor who is being expelled from the Navy was charged by Kitsap County prosecutors Thursday with failing to register as a sex offender, according to attorneys familiar with the case.
State law requires people convicted of certain sex crimes to register as sex offenders within three days of arriving in a new state.
The Department of Defense announced Wednesday that President Barack Obama has nominated Lavelle to be reinstated to the rank of general, the highest in the armed forces. Lavelle died in 1979, seven years after he was forced to retire and was demoted to major general. A general wears four stars; a major general, two. Lavelle, a graduate of Cathedral Latin School and John Carroll University, had been accused of ordering unauthorized bombing raids on North Vietnam and falsifying records about the missions. It was later revealed that the accusations were unfounded.
Miami Herald reports on some blowback from the McChrystal issues.
Army Times reports that:
President Obama has nominated a Cedar Rapids-based assistant U.S. attorney to serve as brigadier general in the Army Reserve and chief judge of the Army Court of Criminal Appeals.
Navy Times reports:
A former Navy officer who was serving time for hiring someone to kill his wife was killed in a Kansas military prison a month before he was supposed to be released.
Officials at Fort Leavenworth say 54-year-old former Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Fricke was beaten with a baseball bat by another inmate on July 24. He died Thursday after his family authorized taking him off life support.
There’s something for everyone out of a number of Navy and Coast Guard cases.
Defense Counsel.
When the military judge wrongly announces a sentence which will inure to your client’s benefit, generally you should keep you mouth shut. But, once you get the SJAR, double check the SJAR against the record. See United States v. Spears below. My perception is there is an increase in the number of error in SJAR’s which the trial defense counsel has failed to comment on. I posted on United States v. Newby yesterday. So what you say, he got relief, good for him. The appellant in Spears will now have a lot of trouble dealing with DFAS to get back the unauthorized forfeitures that’s the problem now. Whereas if the issue had been caught at the time of the SJAR it might have been easier to resolve. Yes I know there are many SJA’s out there who would have pressed forward with the erroneous advice anyway.
Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued an arrest warrant [text, in Spanish; PDF] Thursday for three US troops suspected of gunning down Spanish journalistJuse Couso [advocacy website, JURIST news archive] in Iraq. Couso, a television cameraman, was killed in 2003 when a US tank fired into the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.
www.army.mil reports that:
A former U.S. Army contractor was arrested today in Newport News, Va., for allegedly killing one sailor and seriously injuring another in a vehicular collision in Kuwait[.]
Hanks is charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), a statute that gives U.S. courts jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed outside the United States by, among others, contractors or subcontractors of the Department of Defense. If convicted, Hanks faces up to 10 years in prison.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigative Division and is being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorneys Micah D. Pharris and Steven C. Parker of the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Hurt for the Eastern District of Virginia.
United States v. Newby has been decided and has a reminder for trial defense counsel.
The military judge made a clemency recommendation.
The SJAR failed to note the clemency recommendation.
CAAF has issued an opinion in United States v. Nerad. RYAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which EFFRON, C.J., and ERDMANN, J., joined. BAKER, J., filed a separate opinion concurring in the result. STUCKY, J., filed a separate dissenting opinion.
Nerad gets a remand to AFCCA for the court to clarify it’s ruling.
Thanks (again) to CAAFLog for finding a case relating to collateral consequences — Moutrie v. Secretary of the Army, __ F. Supp. 2d __, No. CV 09-4456-SVC (RC) (C.D. Cal. July 7, 2010).
Up until, oh I don’t remember the date now, but quite a number of years ago, a military prisoner who reached his minimum release date (MRD) was released without any restrictions on liberty post release. That lead to a bit of gamesmanship before the clemency and parole boards. If a prisoner was up for parole consideration and he had less than a year to go for his MRD the prisoner would usually waive parole consideration. They were willing to serve the months rather than be paroled. That was because a paroled prisoner would waive all of their good time. But more importantly be subject to many onerous conditions of parole.
(Note to trial practitioners. Before advising your client about post-trial matters I would recommend you consult and you review with the client DODI 1325.7. This regulation has a number of important rules you can educate your client about (including, yes, sex offenders). Although it does not contain Rule No. 1 for obtaining parole: that you “have taken responsibility for your confining offenses.” Words to that effect must show up somewhere in confinement evaluations and recommendations. That works pretty well in a GP case. If you are a defense counsel and have NG but found guilty case give me a call, all is not lost. [Having sat as a voting member of the Navy C&PB, albeit some years ago, I’d venture that no other rule is as important to parole than Rule No. 1. You may have good scores on the points based classification system and good reports and no discipline reports, but . . . you clearly haven’t learned any lessons.] Anyway. Upon entry to confinement the facility calculates the full term date (FTD), that’s day for day service of sentence, minus credit for pretrial confinement or an Article 13, UCMJ, violation, or effect of a PTA. Then they calculate automatic good time credit based on the length of approved sentence, which becomes the minimum release date (MRD). Absent loss of good-time or clemency or parole that’s when the prisoner can normally expect to be released.)
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
