Recruiters and fake high school graduation and home schooling certificates, and now this:
The U.S. Army is investigating soldiers who bought degrees from an illegal diploma mill that was based in Spokane and resulted in prison time for its operators.
The Army’s Human Resources Command is using a list of customers of the diploma mill operated by Dixie and Steve Randock obtained and posted online last summer by The Spokesman-Review.
Talking to a group of relaxing Soldiers former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld reiterated that you have to go to war in what you’ve got.
Military.com, 22 May 2009.
“Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage,” Rumsfeld Robert Gates said, adding that Specialist Zachary Boyd may have hit on a new kind of psychological warfare. “I can only wonder about the impact on the Taliban.
Wife Doubts PTSD Bigamy Excuse, Military.com, 22 May 2009.
A Missouri woman whose husband was cleared of bigamy said she does not believe his claim that post-traumatic stress disorder made him forget his marriage.
This week my technology item is PhoneTag.
PhoneTag is a fee based system to receive voicemails as a written email.
While on a business trip to Los Angeles in 2003, James Siminoff was out to dinner with friends. Before they could sit down, William had to sort through a 20 minute backlog of voicemails gathered during a day filled with meetings. Jesse commented to James, "Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just read your voicemail?" At the time, James was working with voice recognition technologies and had a creative idea on how to build a system that would enable people to stop listening to voicemail and READ IT. …and with that, PhoneTag was born.
United States v. Crabtree, No. 08-4411, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 10720(4th Cir. May 19, 2009).
In a published opinion the Fourth Circuit sides with the majority of federal circuit courts of appeal that there is no government “clean hands” exception to the receipt into evidence of unlawfully taped telephone calls.
Daniel Crabtree was sentenced to twenty-four months imprisonment for violating the terms of his supervised release. The government established some of the violations by introducing into evidence certain audio tapes that were made by Crabtree’s girlfriend in violation of Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C.A. §§ 2510 – 2522 (West 2000 & Supp. 2008). We agree with Crabtree that although the government was not involved in the interception of Crabtree’s conversations, Title III nonetheless prohibited the government from introducing evidence of the intercepted conversations. We therefore vacate the district court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings.
Here is Prof. Colin Miller’s comment on United States v. Yammine, decided by the NMCCA recently.
David Kocieniewski, Lawyer’s Ways Spelled Murder, U.S. Is Charging, NY Times, 20 May 2009.
He spent a decade as a top prosecutor, trying murder cases in New Jersey, drug cases in federal court and a wide range of offenses in the military justice system.
He went on to become one of the state’s most prominent defense lawyers, representing clients as varied as Abu Ghraib defendants,. . .
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Repeal, Don’t Defend:
In today’s WSJ, Brian Hughes, a former Army Ranger twice awarded the Commendation Medal, makes a powerful case for ending "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Last week saw the exoneration of the 132nd person from death row since 1973. Paul House, who was on death row for 22 years and was scheduled for a new hearing, was exonerated after a DNA test proved he was not the perpetrator of the murder he was convicted of in 1986. Daniel Wade Moore became the 133rd exoneree when he was acquitted at a retrial for a 2003 rape and murder. Given the vast amount of people released from death row in the last 35 years, it is clear that capital punishment in the United States is fatally flawed and there is the unconscionable possibility to execute an innocent person.
ACLU Blog of Rights.
CAAF has decided United States v. Collier, __ M.J. ___ (C.A.A.F. 2009).
This case presents the question whether the military judge erred in granting the government’s motion in limine prohibiting Appellant’s defense counsel from cross-examining HM2 C, the main Government witness, about an alleged homosexual romantic relationship between her and Appellant and from introducing any evidence of such a relationship.1 While the military judge did permit cross-examination about a close friendship, the defense that Appellant wanted to present was that HM2 C framed Appellant for larceny as a result of their romantic relationship ending badly. Because of this ruling, Appellant was free only to assert the motivation of an angry friend rather than a disappointed lover; as the Government then argued in its closing, the motivation of an angry, vengeful friend “strains all logic; it’s just not credible.”
The military judge’s ruling prevented Appellant’s counsel from fully exploring HM2 C’s bias and motive to misrepresent the truth, and precluded Appellant from presenting her theory of the case. Under the facts of this case, this was a violation of Appellant’s Sixth Amendment right to confront a witness against her.
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
