Sad, but not unusual, from The False Rape Society.
My story started last summer when we got back from Iraq. My best friend and I went to a night club and long story short I had sex with a woman. This woman was a female soldier and ended up being late to work the next morning. I was on leave at the time, so I didn’t have to go too work. She accused me of raping her, because she was going to show up to work drunk and late.
. . . the charges are being dropped . . .
Paul C. Giannelli (Case Western Reserve University School of Law) has posted Microscopic Hair Comparisons: A Cautionary Tale on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Report on forensic science, “testimony linking microscopic hair analysis with particular defendants is highly unreliable.” This is a stunning conclusion because hair evidence has been admitted in numerous trials for over a century.
The NAS Report was not the first to raise issues concerning hair evidence. In 1996, the Department of Justice issued a report discussing the exonerations of the first twenty-eight convicts through the use of DNA technology. This report highlighted the significant role that hair analysis played in a number of cases of these miscarriages of justice, including some death penalty cases. In 1998, a Canadian judicial inquiry into the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin was released. His original conviction was based, in part, on hair evidence. The judge conducting the inquiry recommended that “[t]rial judges should undertake a more critical analysis of the admissibility of hair comparison evidence as circumstantial evidence of guilt.”
I posted on Hennis just the other day in terms of one reporters view of the weight of the evidence.
Crime & Consequences picks up on a point.
Myron Pitts, who covered the Hennis trial for the Fayetteville Observer, has this article summing up the evidence. The whole story is worth a read, but my favorite line is this:
SCOTUSBlog has a podcast of today’s oral argument.
Here at truthout is a different perspective on the rapper case.
According to Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist, an Oakland-based organization dedicated to supporting military objectors like Hall, he was not jailed for the song, but was instead jailed "in retaliation for his formal complaint of inadequate mental health services available to him at Fort Stewart. The Army used an angry song that Spc. Hall, a combat veteran of the Iraq War suffering from post-traumatic stress, had produced criticizing the stop-loss policy as the pretext."
What put the 34-year-old New York City native in the brig were, according to Paterson, Hall’s persistent assertions of inadequate mental health care that culminated in a December 7 complaint to the Army Investigator General. Just five days after that, Hall was charged with violating "good order and discipline" at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and was shipped out of the country for a court martial in Kuwait.
SCOTUSBlog reports that:
At about 11 a.m. Monday, the Supreme Court will hear one hour of oral argument in City of Ontario, et al., v. Quon, et al. (08-1332). Arguing for the California city and its police department will be Kent L. Richland of Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland in Los Angeles. The federal government, represented by Deputy Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal, will have 10 minutes as amicus urging reversal of the Ninth Circuit Court decision. Representing four individuals who sued the city will be Dieter C. Dammeier of Lackie, Dammeier & McGill in Upland, CA.
The ubiquitous personal electronic device — pager, cellphone, “smart phone,” PDA — is emerging as a centerpiece in Digital Age legal controversy, including constitutional disputes when a government agency gets involved in regulating the use of these convenient computer-assisted, hand-held items. The Supreme Court has taken on a case to lay down some basic constitutional ground rules on when the users of those devices — at least in government workplaces — can claim a right of privacy, and sue to enforce the right
Here is another viewpoint, from a civilian, about the need to court-martial LTC Lakin.
The (Greeley, CO) Tribune opinion says:
When you become a soldier of the United States of America, you lose some of your rights.
Except in extreme cases, you no longer have the right to refuse orders of superiors. You don’t have the same freedom of speech that other Americans enjoy. You serve at the pleasure of your commander in chief.
Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, while exercising rights that many Americans enjoy, now needs to suffer the consequences for his actions. He has violated the requirements of his office.
I expect we’ll see several commentary’s about the Hennis trial. Here is one from Myron Pitts, FayObserver.com, which he calls, “Evidence adds up in support of Hennis verdict.” (Along with the article is a great list of links to prior reporting on the case.)
I saw a military jury convict Hennis on April 8 and sentence him to die Thursday[.]
Hennis’ lawyer, Frank Spinner, said at the bottom of the courthouse steps that the jury never got to know his client, who did not testify. The jurors instead were treated to gruesome photos of the murder scene, he said.
Thanks to Professor Colin Miller for this piece.
In Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court recently found that certificates of state laboratory analysts are "testimonial" and thus covered by the Confrontation Clause. Thus, if the forensic analysts (or similar experts) who prepared such certificates (or similar documents) do not testify at a criminal defendant’s trial, the certificates are inadmissible. Does the prosecution, however, solve this problem by not admitting these certificates but having other experts offer their "own" conclusions based upon these certificates? That certainly seems to be the case based upon a recent opinion of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina and the recent opinion of the Eleventh Circuit in United States v, Winston, 2010 WL 1253809 (11th Cir. 2010).
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
