Tuesday, May 13, 2008

New cert petition

The Navy-Marine Corps Appellate Defense Division has filed a cert petition seeking review of CAAF's decision in United States v. Stevenson, 66 M.J. 15 (C.A.A.F. 2008). Stevenson v. United States, No. 07-1397. Here's a link to the docket entry: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/07-1397.htm. Sorry, the computer I'm working on blocks me from creating a hypertext link. This computer also appears to block me from using e-mail, so I'll try to acquire and post the Stevenson QP when I return to the land of the unfiltered computer on Thursday night.

1 comment:

Cloudesley Shovell said...

Ah, the saga of Walter Stevenson continues. This is the second cert petition in this case.

After over eight years of trial and appellate litigation, CAAF finally admitted that they screwed up on the 4th Amendment analysis. Turns out that the original trial judge and NMCCA were correct way back in 1999.

The courts continue to tap-dance around the very real jurisdictional issue that exists in this case, and in sharp contrast to Denedo and Lopez de Victoria, CAAF refused to grant any issue related to jurisdiction. Because the most recent CAAF decision was actually (mostly) a win for the defense, I suspect you'll see something about jurisdiction in the QP, rather than 4th A. issues. Might make a nice companion case to Denedo, though the jurisdictional issues are very different.

Kudos, by the way, to Stevenson's counsel, Eric Eversole, who's been working appellate issues on this case for just over nine years now.