JAG CENTRALThe world's first weblog devoted to military justice and military law issues.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS - 21 APR 05
From the NY Times, U.S. Marine Charged in (Romanian) Rock Star's Death ("The United States Marine Corps charged a sergeant with negligent homicide in connection with a car accident that killed a Romanian rock star in December and set off protests by fans, the American Embassy in Bucharest said. The marine, Staff Sgt. Christopher Van Goethem, from Michigan, an embassy guard, left the country immediately after the accident, in which the embassy car he was driving collided with a taxi, killing Teofil Peter, 50, of the band Compact. A breath test indicated that the marine had been drinking, the police said."); and the big military justice story of the day, Pentagon Considers Changing the Legal Definition of Sodomy:
That said, the article's assertion that recent opinions of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces have brought the constitutionality of Article 125 into question is simply inaccurate. In U.S. v. Marcum, 60 M.J. 198 (2004), the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces refused to allow a facial constitutional challenge to Article 125 and upheld its constitutional application to the defendant. To date, no opinion from any service court has found that Article 125, as applied to that defendant, was unconstitutional.
From the Washington Post, Soldier's Father Seeks Harassment Probe (another Akbar Trial Story).
Under Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it is a crime to engage in "unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex," even with mutual consent.ANALYSIS: From a policy perspective, this makes sense. Under Article 125, even if you have consensual oral or anal sex with a member of the opposite sex, you can be charged with sodomy. It simply doesn't make sense to criminalize behavior that such a large percentage of the population engages in.
The changes proposed by the Pentagon's lawyers would narrow the definition to prohibit acts of sodomy with a person under age 16 or acts "committed by force." Their memorandum says this would "conform more closely to other federal laws and regulations."
Recent rulings by the Supreme Court and the United States Court of Criminal Appeals for the Armed Forces have raised questions about the constitutionality of the military's ban on consensual sodomy.
That said, the article's assertion that recent opinions of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces have brought the constitutionality of Article 125 into question is simply inaccurate. In U.S. v. Marcum, 60 M.J. 198 (2004), the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces refused to allow a facial constitutional challenge to Article 125 and upheld its constitutional application to the defendant. To date, no opinion from any service court has found that Article 125, as applied to that defendant, was unconstitutional.
From the Washington Post, Soldier's Father Seeks Harassment Probe (another Akbar Trial Story).
