A pun too close to call. Article 15 and court-martial could be on the horizon for more Marines.
Smile, you’re on security cameras.
Despite the field overhead of video surveillance at the exchanges aboard Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., Marines are betting the odds they won’t get caught stealing.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said Justice Department prosecutors improperly built their case on sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity. Urbina said the government’s explanations were “contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.”
And all charges have been dismissed, reports Air Force Times.
In ruling one month before the defendants were to face trial in Washington, Judge Urbina dismissed the case not for its merits, but for the way the government had handled the prosecution, calling the government’s explanations for the improper use of statements “contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.”
Attorney John Galligan says Maj. Nidal Hasan has excessive restrictions — including a rule barring any visitors when his attorneys are in his hospital room.
Air Force Times reports.
This same rule operates at the pretrial confinement facility. The Brigs are pretty good about letting counsel in to visit for “legal visits.” But there are restrictions on mingling of family visits and “professional” visits.
Dear Representative Burton,
Thank you for your letter expressing your and your colleagues concern regarding the pending Courts-martial of Petty Officers Huertas, McCabe, and Keefe. I understand your interest in these cases and can assure you that I am committed to protecting the rights of the Sailors who have been accused.
Regrettably it appears that your perception of the incident is based upon incomplete and factually inaccurate press coverage. Despite what has been reported, these allegations are not founded solely on the word of the detainee, but rather, were initially raised by other U.S. service members. Additionally, the alleged injuries did not occur during actions on the objective, as is also being widely reported in the media. A medical examination conducted at the time the detainee was turned over to U.S. forces determined that his alleged injuries were inflicted several hours after the operation had ended, and while in the custody and care of the U.S. at Camp Schweidler’s detainee holding facility.
Here is the QP in Holland v. Florida
Whether “gross negligence” by collateral counsel, which directly results in the late filing of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, can qualify as an exceptional circumstance warranting equitable tolling, or whether, in conflict with other circuits, the Eleventh Circuit was proper in determining that factors beyond “gross negligence” must be established before an extraordinary circumstance can be found that would warrant equitable tolling?
The Fall of a Black Army Officer: Racism & the Myth of Henry O. Flipper, by Charles M. Robinson III, Norman, Ok: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.
In his 1994 book The Court-Martial of Lieutenant Henry Flipper, Robinson, an historian of the frontier army, held to the view that Flipper?s 1881 conviction for embezzlement was rooted in racism.
Reviewing materials not available at the time he did the earlier book, in the present work Robinson concludes that, while not denying the existence of racism in the army, Flipper had indeed been careless with funds, albeit probably intentionally. Such financial misconduct apparently was not uncommon in the Old Army, as very young officers were often given responsibility for large sums with little or not training. A number of other officers in the period were also found short in their accounts. The penalties handed out to most of these officers, however, were not usually immediate expulsion from the service, which is where the Flipper case differs from theirs.
Should military veterans get a break when they are sentenced for crimes?
Asks a piece in the Wall Street Journal. This is interesting in light of some discussion on CAAFLog about sentencing in court-martial and sentence ranges under the UCMJ. Seems some civilian judges are more interested in giving a sentence based on the whole person and individualized rather than a set amount.
“We dump all kinds of money to get soldiers over there and train them to kill, but we don’t do anything to reintegrate them into our society,” says John L. Kane, a federal judge in Denver.
A former commander in the Tennessee State Guard has lost an appeal to overturn his conviction for trying to provide his soldiers with homemade machine guns for possible use in defending the state.
At trial and in his appeal, Mr. Hamblen argued that he and his soldiers had a Second Amendment right as members of the state militia to possess military-grade weapons.
He said Tennessee’s state guard arsenal included only 21 M-16 rifles for 3,500 volunteer soldiers.
Army Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland has responded to a letter that challenges the handling of a case against three Navy SEALs accused of mishandling a suspected terrorist.
In the Dec. 15 letter, addressed to Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., Cleveland essentially refuses to drop the charges against the three men."While the assault and resulting injury to the detainee were relatively minor, the more disconcerting allegations are those related to the sailor’s attempts to cover-up the incident," said Cleveland, who writes that this appears to be an attempt to influence the testimony of a witness.
Cleveland writes that the "alleged allegations are not founded solely on the word of the detainee, but rather, were initially raised by other U.S. service members."
David Vincent Weber arrived last month at a Ramona Veterans of Foreign Wars event in style: two stars on his shoulder and two Purple Heart medals pinned on the front of a Marine Corps
uniform.
Weber, 69, appeared in a federal courtroom in downtown San Diego yesterday with considerably less pomp. He faces a charge under the 2005 Stolen Valor Act of wearing military medals he didn’t earn while passing himself off as a Marine major general at VFW Post 3783’s birthday celebration for the Corps.
SignOn San Diego reports.
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
