R.C.M. 506
     (a) Protection of Government Information. Except where disclosure is required by a federal statute, government information is privileged from disclosure if disclosure would be detrimental to the public interest.

     (b) Scope. “Government information” includes official communication and documents and other information within the custody or control of the Federal Government. This rule does not apply to the identity of an informant (Mil. R. Evid. 507).

R.C.M. 507
     (a) General Rule. The United States or a State or subdivision thereof has a privilege to refuse to disclose the identity of an informant. Unless otherwise privileged under these rules, the communications of an informant are not privileged except to the extent necessary to prevent the disclosure of the informant’s identity.

In May 2020, after a night of heavy drinking at then MASN Mike’s apartment, MASN Hotel allegedly touched MA3 Sierra on the buttocks while she was asleep. Appellee and MASN Mike were the only two witnesses to this act, for which MASN Hotel pleaded guilty at special court-martial to assault consummated by a battery. At his court-martial, MASN Hotel and the Government stipulated as fact that Appellee “told [MASN Hotel] that he would take a shot of alcohol if [MASN Hotel] touched the lower back and hips area” of MA3 Sierra.

In light of this stipulation, MASN Mike is the Government’s principal witness for its charge that Appellee solicited MASN Hotel to commit abusive sexual contact by touching MA3 Sierra’s “buttocks” without her consent. MASN Mike’s account of Appellee’s involvement has changed over time.
. . . 
​Appellee’s trial defense counsel argued that the apparently lenient handling of MASN Mike’s case suggested he had been serving as a CI for NCIS, and moved to compel confirmation of that and any related information. The military judge ordered the Government to confirm or deny whether now Mr. Mike had been a government source or had a cooperation agreement with NCIS, and if so, to disclose any associated materials to the Defense. The Government responded indirectly by stating that no CI was used in Appellee’s case, and neither confirmed nor denied whether Mr. Mike had worked as a CI in other NCIS cases. Around the same time, the NCIS Director claimed the government information privilege under Mil. R. Evid. 506 over the CI status of Mr. Mike.

[W]e find no abuse of discretion in the military judge’s order that confirmation or denial of Mr. Mike’s CI status and any related privileged materials in NCIS possession be submitted for an in camera discoverability review, as such information reasonably tends to affect the credibility of Mr. Mike. Like our sister court, we find that when it “fail[s] to provide the Defense with information about the CI status of [its material witnesses], the Government essentially preclude[s] the defense from impeaching their credibility and motivation for being involved in the situation involving [Appellee] and his court-martial.” Since it is the witness’s affiliation with one party over the other that gives rise to such issues of credibility and bias, we find that the impeachment value of a witness’s CI status is not limited to the witness’s service as a CI in the particular case at hand. 

​This sexual assault case is before us a second time. In 2019, we found legal error when Appellant’s squadron executive officer [XO] approved a search authorization. The Judge Advocate General of the Navy certified that issue to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces [CAAF], where our decision was reversed and the case was remanded. CAAF affirmed one of Appellant’s findings of guilt for violating a general order by fraternizing—a finding we affirmed—because the search produced no evidence pertinent to that specification. We now review Appellant’s findings of guilt of two specifications for violating a lawful general order, one specification of sexual assault by bodily harm, one specification of abusive sexual contact by bodily harm, and one specification of adultery in violation of Articles 92, 120, and 134, Uniform Code of Military Justice [UCMJ].

A recurring discussion on #AppellateTwitter and #LegalWriting Twitter is the importance (or lack thereof) of proper citation format. A recent post said that time spent learning to cite properly was not time well spent. I don’t take the author of that post to mean that citations are unimportant, but the view expresses a writer-centric view of citations rather than a reader-centric view. As writers, and particularly as appellate advocates, we must take a reader-centric view of writing. So, let me explain why I think that time spent learning to cite properly is time well spent.

​Appellant asserts in his sole assignment of error [AOE] that the Government failed to comply with the plea agreement when it reduced Appellant to paygrade E-1, when no statute or regulation authorized automatic reduction in rank and the terms of the plea agreement disallowed the military judge from imposing reduction in rank. We find no prejudicial error and affirm.

However, the case precedent does not support that Article 66 empowers this Court to resolve pay disputes resulting from an apparent administrative error by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service [DFAS]. Nor need we take such remedial action to resolve Appellant’s AOE. Here, insofar as the United States Government acted without authority by paying Appellant at paygrade E-1, it was not due to a violation of the plea agreement. The plea agreement’s term that “[n]o reduction in rank will be adjudged” was complied with when the military judge did not adjudge a sentence that included a reduction in rank and the convening authority took no action to approve one. 13 Since Appellant has not shown that the Government failed to comply with that term of the plea agreement, we find his AOE to be without merit. We therefore conclude it is beyond the purview of this Court of limited jurisdiction to take remedial action to resolve what amounts to an administrative pay dispute.