JAG CENTRAL

Inside Higher Ed has this story about the government enforcing the Solomon Amendment against New York Law School. (The other law schools are Vermont and William Mitchell). Thanks to TaxProf Paul L. Caron and Todd Zywicki of the Volokh Conspiracy for the link. Those blogs point out that all three law schools are independent, so their decision to bar military recruiters did not hurt other departments of the same university. If Arkansas or UCLA or any other University-based law school denied access to recruiters, the SA says that all federal funds could be cut off from the whole university.

For the Centrist's previous posts on the SA, click here (internal search).

UPDATE: Here is the TaxProf's post with links to all the briefs filed at the Supreme Court in Rumsfeld v. FAIR.

At the end of the most recent Supreme Court term, some "blawgs" (law blogs) had some interesting statistical analyses of the Court's decisions. (See e.g. Tom Goldstein's Supreme Court blog here and here).

C.A.A.F. already publishes some nifty statistics in their Annual Reports (e.g. 2004 term). But, no one wants to wait until the report is released for this term. I have done some preliminary data collection on the 2005 term. It is preliminary because (1) I may have missed something; (2) I only looked at the authors of the Majority and separate opinions, and (3) the term isn't over until the end of September; we may see additional opinions released. With all those caveats, here's what I have discovered:

I count 48 opinions released thus far. Of those, at least 23 were unanimous.[*] Judge Crawford authored 14 separate opinions (29% of the cases). That is roughly equal to the total number of separate opinions written by the other judges combined (15). Judge Erdmann took second place (5), followed by Judge Baker (4). Chief Judge Gierke and Judge Effron each wrote three (3).

Who is the "consensus-builder"?

Judge Baker wrote 8 opinions for the court. 5 of those drew separate opinions (62.5%).

Judge Crawford wrote 10 opinions for the court. 6 of those drew separate opinions (60%). Combined with the separate opinions she wrote, that means she was writing separately or someone was writing separately from her 42% of the time (20 cases).

Judge Erdmann wrote 12 opinions for the court. Judge Crawford wrote separate opinions in 7 of those cases (58%).

Judge Effron wrote 12 opionions, and 6 drew separate opinions (50%).

Chief Judge Gierke wrote 5 opinions, with only 1 dissent (20%).

That's all the mind-numbing data for tonight. I hope to update this soon after the term officially ends and relate these stats to the results (i.e., findings / sentence affirmed / reversed; CCA affirmed / reversed).

[FN *][Warning: boring and technical jurisprudential stuff in this paragraph. Feel free to skip it.] Sometimes, a judge joins the majority opinion, but writes separately to clarify an additional point. Other times, a judge concurs in the "judgment" or "result" (i.e., the C.C.A. is affirmed or reversed) but does not agree with the reasoning employed by the court. In the first draft of my spreadsheet, these are both called "concur," and they were not included in the total of unanimous cases. The first category of opinions are still unanimous, while the second arguably are not. I should be able to clarify this distinction in the data soon enough, and give a more accurate account of consensus on the court. Then there is the third category, concur-in-part and dissent-in-part. Technically, I think this category only includes cases where the judge agrees with part of the judgment or part of the result. So, if the court reverses the findings and vacates the sentence, and Judge X agrees that the sentence should be vacated but would affirm the findings, then Judge X concurs-in-part and dissents-in-part. But if Judge X just disagrees with part of the reasoning (e.g. "I think the petitioner's constitutional claim is bogus, but I agree with the court that his statutory claim requires reversal") then that is just a separate concurrence.

PFC Lynddie England and Inmate Charles Graner, A Match Made in Hell

From the San Antonio Express-Writer, word that the new trial for PFC Lynddie England, the most famous of the Abu Ghraib abuse suspects, has been set:

Pfc. Lynndie England, whose plea bargain was tossed by a Fort Hood judge earlier this year, returns to the Killeen post next week to stand trial in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and could get the longest sentence of nine-lower-ranking soldiers in the case.

Fort Hood spokesman Dan Hassett said pretrial motions will begin Tuesday, and that this time around no plea bargain is now on the table. The trial will begin Wednesday.

That means she could land in the stockade for 11 years when pre-trial motions are made in a small Fort Hood courtroom.

"The photograph with her having the dog leash on the detainee has become associated with the Abu Ghraib scandal," St. Mary's University Law School professor Jeffrey Addicott said today. "When you see that photograph, you think of Private England, and also the other photo with the cigarette in her mouth pointing at the naked detainee's genitals.

"Rightly or wrongly, she's the poster child for Abu Ghraib, and because of that she's going to get a sentence that's probably going to be greater than her counterparts who were involved in the scandal."

Col. James Pohl, the military judge, threw out her plea bargain in early May after England's one-time lover, Pvt. Charles Graner Jr., testified they did nothing wrong as she led a nude Iraqi inmate from his cell by a leash.

Pohl was required to enter a not guilty plea on England's behalf in connection with a charge that she and Graner conspired to mistreat the inmate. A maltreatment count based on the same incident also was tossed, and neither can be used again.

ANALYSIS: I wouldn't be so sure about the "no plea on the table" business. Having a long drawn out trial recounted on national TV is in nobody's interests. I think a plea bargain of around six years can be worked out. But then, I'm just a dumb JAG candidate.

Categories: Lynddie+England, Detainee+Abuse, Abu+Ghraib

From the NY Times, 3 Charged in Prisoner Abuse Case:

An Army officer and two more of his soldiers from a Reserve unit have been charged in a prisoner abuse investigation in Afghanistan, the Army announced Tuesday.

The officer, Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, who led the 377th Military Police Company based in Cincinnati, was charged with dereliction of duty and making a false official statement. He is the first officer to be charged in the investigation.

The abuse case primarily involves two detainees who died at the Bagram Air Base detention center, where Captain Beiring's unit worked. The first, Mullah Habibullah, was found dead in his cell at the detention center just days after being taken into American custody in December 2002. A second detainee, Dilawar, arrived at Bagram the day after Mr. Habibullah died. Mr. Dilawar died about a week later.

Investigators say Captain Beiring did not properly train or supervise soldiers under his command in legal uses of force, according to documents released by the Army. He is also accused of failing to take steps to correct the soldiers' actions - as directed by his superior and a legal adviser - after Mr. Habibullah died. In addition, Captain Beiring is accused of lying about training his soldiers received.

Staff Sgt. Brian L. Doyle and Sgt. Duane M. Grubb, both from the unit Captain Beiring commanded, were also charged Tuesday. Sergeant Doyle faces charges of dereliction of duty and maltreatment. Sergeant Grubb is accused of assault, maltreatment and making a false official statement.

In the shocker of the day, from USA Today of all places, a story about military intelligence interrogators at Gitmo reportedly giving inmates the names and SSNs of their guards in exchange for intel. The article proving that buddy is only half the word, entitled MPs Accuse Gitmo Interrogators Of Giving Suspects Personal Data:

A U.S. inquiry into alleged abuse at Guantanamo uncovered a climate of deep distrust between military police and interrogators, who were accused during the probe of giving terror suspects personal information about their guards.
The MPs suspected interrogators gave their names and Social Security numbers to prisoners in exchange for intelligence, according to the investigation, which recommended that a senior interrogator be relieved of duty for "failure to know his enemy."

The interrogator "sees himself as a hero for the detainees, and against the MPs, on a crusade in the battle of the MPs against the detainees," one investigator wrote in the report on the inquiry that The Associated Press obtained under a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

The report recommended military authorities look further into the disclosure of MP information to detainees. Guantanamo officials didn't respond to repeated questions about the investigation, including whether the interrogator — a military officer — was relieved of duty or whether the prison camp instituted any reforms in response to the findings.

The investigation began in March 2004, when the same interrogator claimed military police had abused detainees at the high-security camp in eastern Cuba, where the United States holds about 500 men captured in its war on terror.

The interrogator claimed that guards mistreated a suspected al-Qaeda member by not allowing him to use the bathroom immediately after a five-hour interrogation and that at other times withheld food and turned the temperature down on a cell to 52 degrees as punishment.

An investigating officer, however, found no evidence of abuse by the guards.

The investigator faulted the interrogator instead — recommending he be relieved of his duties for reasons that included a "failure to know his enemy," the "unfounded" allegations against the guards and "the noted possibility that he suffers from Reverse Stockholm Syndrome."

Categories: Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Detainee+Abuse, Newspapers

After a 6 day trek, I am finally at Ft. Lee, VA. Blogging begins Monday from moi.

Categories: Miscellaneous