Seattle Times reports.
A woman accused of killing two fellow soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord and kidnapping their baby in 2008 will face a general court-martial after military authorities determined last week there was enough evidence to move forward with the case.
The News Tribune reports this is a death penalty referral (seems like a decent summary of the case so far). See also, BakersfieldNow.com.
A case pending at the U.S. Supreme Court was recently settled out of court, and the case withdrawn from consideration. It appears that there has been a settlement of $12M, for prosecutorial misconduct.
"This means prosecutors who step outside their traditional role and who act as investigators (in criminal cases) can still be subject to civil rights lawsuits just as police would be."
Prosecutors are normally immune from lawsuits involving work during trials. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided in McGhee vs. Pottawattamie County in 2008 that plaintiffs could sue prosecutors under civil rights statutes if the alleged wrongdoing arose from investigatory work before the trial started.
The Army recently asked 45 of its soldiers in the highest enlisted rank to retire for substandard performance, past criminal convictions, problems with alcohol, fraternization or sexual harassment in their recent pasts.
Of the 45 sergeants major whose records were flagged under the newly reinstituted Qualitative Management Program, 28 complied, putting in their retirement paperwork and quietly fading away.
But 15 fought it, arguing that they were valuable Army assets despite any previous incidents. A panel of their peers usually agreed: 12 of the 15 were allowed to remain on active duty. The remaining three were forced to retire, however.
Here’s the scenario:
Client is convicted at court-martial. Sentencing is to take place the next day, or a Monday after a Friday conviction. Based on the charges and the evidence there’s a reasonable likelihood the client will get some confinement. The command wants to put the client in pretrial confinement pending sentencing. Can they?
1. If the client was already confined, the confinement can be continued.
There are a number of ways denial of counsel of choice can come up, most frequently related to the availability of civilian counsel. Here’s an interesting one.
United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006). The opinion is written by Justice Scalia. Here are the important part of the opinion:
In sum, the right at stake here is the right to counsel of choice, not the right to a fair trial; and that right was violated because the deprivation of counsel was erroneous. No additional showing of prejudice is required to make the violation "complete."
United States v. Cowgill.
WHETHER THE MILITARY JUDGE ABUSED HER DISCRETION IN
DENYING THE DEFENSE MOTION TO SUPPRESS ALL EVIDENCE
FROM APPELLANT’S HOME.
The two underlying point were: potential erroneous information given for a search warrant (statements were factually incorrect, but believed to be true by the detective at the time), and if there was erroneous information, was there enough probable cause without the erroneous information.
On habeas review of state court convictions, the detective’s trial testimony about the statements of two non-testifying co-actors which implicated the defendant in the shooting and which were used to confront the defendant during his interview violated the Confrontation Clause and constituted plain error, in Ray v. Boatwright, _ F.3d _ (No. 08-2825).
Since Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), testimonial statements are inadmissible under the Confrontation Clause unless the declarant testifies subject to cross examination. There are not many cases in which a Confrontation Clause challenge raised for the first time on appeal may result in plain error. The Seventh Circuit recently identified one case which did.
There is an interesting appellate procedural history. The court intially denied various efforts to have a post-trial R.C.M. 706 evaluation. But, the court did sua sponte reconsider the denial and did order a new R.C.M. 706 examination.
On 6 January 2010, the ordered R.C.M. 706 evaluation report was released. The evaluation found that during all relevant time periods, the appellant suffered from Schizophrenia (paranoid type), a severe mental disease, but that at the time of his offenses, the appellant was able to appreciate the nature and quality of his actions. The report, however, concluded that at the time of his trial, the appellant’s mental disease rendered him unable to understand the nature of the proceedings against him or to cooperate intelligently in his defense.
WRAL.com reports that members selection has begun in the Hennis court-martial.
x reports that the military judge has declined to delay trial pending the outcome of Hennis’s District Court jurisdictional case.
Navy Times reports:
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog