Vincente Ray Flores-Air Force-Reduction in rank to grade E-3 (as amended); forfeiture of $700 pay per month for four months; confinement for four months, suspended for participation in the Air Force Return to Duty Program (May 16, 2008) Wrongfully using 3,4 methylenedioxymethmaphetamine; underage drinking.

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​Vincente Ray Flores was court martialed when he was around 19 for consuming ecstasy and alcohol while serving in the military. After being sentenced to four months confinement, he participated in a return-to-duty program and remains on active duty, earning various honors from the military.

Cheers.

And may you be having fair winds and following seas for 2023.

Military Justice Reform: The Next Twenty Years
February 24, 2023
9:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
Villanova University

​At the close of the prosecution’s case, the military judge summarily denied the Defense motion brought under R.C.M. 917. The military judge reasoned: Denied. I continue to find, that there is evidence that has been presented that an agreement existed that after that agreement was formed that an overt action act was performed. That overt act was the agreement to purchase the MDMA, which was separate and apart from the original agreement, which was to distribute a controlled substance and that the agreement to purchase—essentially to front the money was not part of the original agreement. And by agreeing to front the money, that was an overt act to bring out—to accomplish the end state of the agreement; the object of the conspiracy. The issue as to whether the agreement between Appellant and 2ndLt November—that Appellant agreed to purchase drugs from 2ndLt November—was either an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy to distribute drugs or was merely part of the agreement itself that formed the conspiracy to distribute drugs, is exactly the type of issue that would make an excellent law school final exam question.

Put simply, we find that the “overt act” charged was merely part of the overall agreement to distribute MDMA, and was not in any way independent of that agreement. Therefore, both the charge itself and the evidence adduced at trial were legally insufficient to sustain a conviction, and the military judge should have dismissed Charge I prior to trial (or at the close of the government’s case under Rule for Court-Martial 917). It follows that as the specification under Charge I fails to state an offense, the conviction for Charge I is therefore legally insufficient.

Cheers!

Off to enjoy some spiced eggnog which was NOT purchased from Cranford's Supermarket.

"Justia."

The summary is from Justia.com.

​of attempting to escape custody, desertion, resisting apprehension, striking a superior noncommissioned officer, failure to obey a lawful order, unlawfully carrying a concealed handgun, assault upon a person in the execution of military law enforcement duties, fleeing apprehension, and resisting apprehension[.]

was acquitted of one specification each of fleeing apprehension and assaulting a superior noncommissioned officer[.]

U.S. policymakers’ responses to the global data privacy movement are creating a deep structural unfairness in the criminal legal system. In an era of cloud computing, when data about communications and activities occurring anywhere in the world can be stored on servers located anywhere else, access to such data can make the difference between convictions and acquittals. At the same time, a wave of new global data privacy laws risks cutting off cross-border access to digital evidence in criminal investigations. Recognizing the threat to law enforcement interests, U.S. policymakers enacted the CLOUD Act of 2018 to create special procedures for law enforcement to circumvent foreign data privacy laws and access cross-border evidence anyway. Yet no one is creating similar procedures for criminal defense investigators.

In the U.S. adversarial legal system, criminal defense counsel are the sole actors formally tasked with investigating evidence of innocence. While law enforcement must disclose exculpatory evidence that they happen to possess, law enforcement has no formal duty to actively seek out such evidence. As a result, selectively advantaging law enforcement investigations of guilt without creating parallel procedures for the defense means selectively suppressing evidence of innocence. This asymmetry gets privacy backwards. Privacy protections ostensibly meant to constrain government power may accomplish that goal in an absolute sense, but relatively speaking they specially empower the government as compared to the defense. They thereby undermine the criminal defense process that is itself supposed to guard against government abuse.

This Article exposes this structural, anti-defendant bias that U.S. responses to the global data privacy movement are in the midst of producing. It then uses this problem as a case study to examine the constitutionality of a more general category of laws: privacy laws that disadvantage criminal defense investigations as compared to their law enforcement counterparts. It diagnoses why constitutional challenges to these types of laws have failed in the past and proposes a novel definitional argument to strengthen these challenges moving forward. Ironically, the very CLOUD Act procedures that exclude defense investigators also hold a key to advocating on their behalf.

​In 2019, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of US v. Gamble, reaffirming the “dual sovereignty” exception to the double jeopardy protection of the Fifth Amendment. The Court considered the absence of definite information about the English case of R. v. Hutchinson (1677) to be crucial to its decision. Hutchinson has long been cited as authority for the proposition that an acquittal in a foreign court serves as a complete bar to a prosecution in England and Wales of a UK Citizen, for the murder abroad of another UK citizen. It was argued for Gamble that this was the common law of England in 1791, the date of ratification of the US Constitution, and it was incorporated into the meaning of the Fifth Amendment, so that he, having been convicted of an offence in Alabama, could not be tried for the same offence under Federal Criminal Law. The report of Hutchinson usually cited ((1677) 3 Keb 785) is only to a bail hearing and says nothing about double jeopardy. This article sets out a fuller and more accurate account of Hutchinson than was available to the US Supreme Court. Drawing upon a range of sources, including manuscript letters, state papers and plea and controlment rolls, and a contemporary (1678) manuscript report of the decision of the judges, it identifies the actors and explains the relevant law on jurisdiction and the procedure that was adopted. The killing was in Lisbon in December 1675. In 1676 there were two unsuccessful prosecutions in Lisbon. When the alleged killer was in England the victim’s father had him arrested and petitioned the King’s Council to issue a commission under the Criminal Law Act 1541 for Hutchinson to be tried in England. The Council referred to the judges the questions whether the murder in Portugal of an Englishman by an Englishman could be tried in England (and, if so, in which court); and if they could, whether the fact that he had been tried and acquitted in Portugal served as a bar. The judges held that the murder could be in principle be tried in common law courts, where a commission was issued under the Criminal Law Act 1541, but that the Portuguese acquittals were a bar to the proceedings. Far from being ‘feeble’ (as Alito J described it) the evidence is overwhelming that Hutchinson was decided by a meeting of the judges in exactly the manner set out in a footnote in Leach’s report, first published in 1789, of Roche (1775), and that this does represent English common law as it stood in 1791. If the state of English common law at that date is to be treated as dispositive of disputes as to the meaning of expressions in the US Constitution, which is the dominant “originalist” position on its interpretation, then the US Supreme Court should have closer regard to the history. English law on the relationship between double jeopardy and overseas trials should also be reconsidered.