WASHINGTON – Life-and-death questions shadow misconduct at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory, where investigators discovered that a lab analyst cut corners and falsified reports: Were the innocent convicted, and did the guilty go free?

The answer is troubling: In many cases, the destruction of evidence and the passage of time make it impossible to know.

“How do you resolve the question when you have no way, when the original samples have been lost and there is no way to retest them?” attorney Frank Spinner asked lab official Michael Auvdel at a July 2008 court hearing.

Read the Full Article

In another Navy Times report, the Pentagon has come out with a statement saying that an admiral’s remarks should not be thought of as a lobbying effort to Congress; something that is illegal for active duty military personnel. In a follow up report, the Pentagon recognized the admiral’s mistake, but said he didn’t break the rules.

Firm Wins Hills Trailer Case-Findings and Sentence Set Aside for Sailor Accused of Multiple Sexual Assaults of his Estranged Spouse-Mr. Sheldon argued the case on March 15, 2018.

The Navy Times reports on two high-ranking Naval officers who faced disciplinary actions “before the mast” were removed from service Some experts in military law now think they may have recourse to get the disciplinary action reversed.

Read the Full Article

Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings has penned another potential career-ender for a U.S. Army general. In this case, however, the most riveting aspect of Hasting’s expose on Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops, isn’t Caldwell’s possible crimes, it is the alleged cover-up.

Hastings previously torpedoed the meteoric career of now-retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, after members of McChrystal’s inner circle mouthed off to Hastings about senior members of the Obama administration, including the President.

This time, Hastings takes aim at Caldwell, the former top U.S. spokesman in Iraq, who is now in charge of training Afghan security forces. The central accusation against Caldwell isn’t actually all that jaw dropping. Caldwell ordered a four-man team of Army psychological operations soldiers to help him prep for the visits of influential U.S. senators, including John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed and others. Caldwell wanted the psychological operations team to assemble basic background profiles, including voting records and interests, that would help them influence the senators to provide the Army with more troops in Afghanistan. (Carl Levin, one of those senators, released a statement Thursday saying he “never needed any convincing” on this point.

Read the Full Article

The Defense Department will evaluate whether it should raise the rank of the armed services’ judge advocate generals (JAGS) to three-star positions after an independent panel of experts recommended giving the top military lawyers more power and authority within the Pentagon.

Read the Full Article

The first aftershocks of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision striking down a Texas sodomy law have reached the U.S. military, where the ruling is sparking new court challenges to the armed forces’ ban on openly gay personnel and other rules affecting sexuality.

A gay former officer is citing the ruling, known as Lawrence v. Texas, in a lawsuit challenging his dismissal from the Army. Another soldier is invoking Lawrence to fight his court-martial conviction for a sexual offense. And the Pentagon’s own lawyers are pondering whether the case requires adjustments to military criminal law.

Read the Full Article