Up periscope - 22 January 2021

1/22/2021

Greetings, and no there is not much activity in the courts.

AFCCA

United States v. Walker is a post-trial confinement case. Appellant alleged wrongful denial of prescribed medications at the confinement facility and that the conditions of post-trial confinement were inappropriately severe. Rather than address the issues, the court remanded for a new and correct post-trial action.

POTENTIAL APPELLATE CASES

An Air Force airman in New Mexico is facing a military trial next week in connection with a fatal car crash nearly two years ago. Prosecutors said Airman 1st Class Calvin Cooper is facing charges of involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide and reckless driving.

An arraignment at Fort Bliss [has] officially launched the court-martial proceedings against an Army private first class accused of sexual assaulting a fellow soldier who was found dead on New Year's Eve. In addition, officials have charged the 21-year-old Alvarado as a serial offender, with the documents detailing two other sexual assaults he allegedly committed against other women in the months after the attack on Graham.

WORTH THE WATCH

Brother Bill sent us a interesting Zoom video. Something I would hope one of us would be inclined to do no matter the frustration. Later reporting seems to indicate the attorney involved is now facing a discipline investigation.

*Brought to you as a product of the MilitaryLawNewsSpeakBureau.

5 Comments

Cloudesley Shovell

1/22/2021 09:28:34 am

From the linked article concerning A1C Calvin Cooper:

"They [prosecutors] said Cooper could get a court-martial and prison time if convicted."

Oh no! Not the dreaded dreaded military trial punishment of . . . court-martial!

Your daily reminder of the late great Michael Crichton's wonderful Gell-Mann amnesia, a commentary on the media, long before the more recent and pithy "fake news".

Quoting Michael Crichton:

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

--Kind regards,
CS

Bill

1/25/2021 01:01:29 pm

I’d argue that we’ve recently had 4+ years of evidence that not everyone acts this way:

“In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say.”

1/26/2021 10:39:25 am

The fact that not everyone acts that way, was, I believe, Mr. Crichton's precise point. Actually, Dr. Crichton if you are particular about such things.

In any case, I was merely commenting on the media's everlasting and outsized talent at making basic errors of fact. I quoted Crichton extensively because he says it so much more elegantly.

I'm not sure why you're referring to such a limited 4 year timeline. The media and newspapers have been making the errors Crichton refers to for much longer than that. And people have been suffering from amnesia just as long.

Kind regards,
CS

The mininum necessary

1/26/2021 12:09:30 am

I'll say slow. The journal is almost two weeks behind. But,
https://www.caaflog.org/home/willenbring-appeals-accas-2001-opinion

Denied on the 12th.
https://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/journal/2021Jrnl/2021Jan.htm

1/26/2021 09:51:06 pm

Unfortunate that the media isn't the only polishing their image.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/newsweek-quietly-changes-2015-story-to-support-2021-article-slamming-tom-cotton-about-ranger-claims/ar-BB1d7DnF?li=BBnb7Kz

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Up periscope - 22 January 2021

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