SAUSA

Here’s an interesting piece from Volokh.

It appears the often bad habits of the military court-room have shown up in federal district court.  The appellate judges don’t seem amused, but neither do they find prejudice.  Tolerated misconduct without findings of prejudice don’t discourage, they encourage.  However, here the defense counsel didn’t help – actually didn’t object.

The Nightmare of Every Rookie Prosecutor: Ouch. From Kozinski’s majority opinion:

The government concedes the impropriety of many of these statements, but points out that the prosecutors were Special Assistant United States Attorneys on loan from the military. That’s no excuse at all; when the United States Attorney endows lawyers with the powers of federal prosecutors, he has a responsibility to properly train and supervise them so as to avoid trampling defendants’ rights.

This partial affirmance does not condone what happened at trial. Rather, this mixed result suggests only that trials can sometimes serve justice despite strenuous efforts to the contrary.