JAG CENTRAL

From the NY Times, Army Cadet Pleads Guilty in Sex Case at West Point:

West Point cadet was sentenced on Thursday to four years in a military prison and dismissed from the Army after pleading guilty to a series of sex-related charges stemming from his breaking into the rooms of four female cadets in the middle of the night.

The cadet, Tracey L. Rivers, a sophomore from Superior, Wis., was initially charged with one count of rape along with other violations. But the charges were reduced after prosecutors examined all the evidence, said a spokesman for West Point, Lt. Col. Kent P. Cassella.

Instead, Mr. Rivers, at his court martial on Thursday, pleaded guilty to a long list of lesser, though still serious, charges, including indecent assault, indecent acts with another, accessing pornographic material on the government computer network, leaving his room after taps and entering female cadets' barracks rooms without their permission.

From the Washington Post, Padilla Appeals to High Court ("Lawyers for "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla want the Supreme Court to step in and rule on the U.S. citizen's indefinite military detention, arguing that the judiciary needs to rein in the Bush administration's conduct in the war on terrorism. "Delay increases the chance that Padilla could be faced with an unconstitutionally coerced choice -- for example, whether to plead guilty to a crime or to give up other rights in order to avoid further months of detention as an enemy combatant," Padilla's lawyers wrote in papers filed Thursday.").