Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
Brown v. United States.
Petitioner sought relief for insufficiency of proof on a rape conviction and recalculation of some sentence credit.
Petitioner now claims his pretrial confinement was 230 days instead of 210, and seeks adjustment by this court of his military sentence. As respondents point out, however, petitioner failed to include this claim in his direct appeal to the CAAF. Petitioner cited 230 days of pretrial credit in his argument to the NMCCA that he should be granted two for one days of credit, but raised no claim to the CAAF seeking additional or corrected credit for his pretrial confinement.
If a ground for relief was not raised in the military courts, the district court must deem that ground waived. See Watson, 782 F.2d at 143. The only exception to the waiver rule is through a showing of cause excusing the procedural default and actual prejudice resulting from the error. See Lips, 997 F.2d at 812.