Wednesday, January 21, 2009

CAAF denies petition for extraordinary relief in Murphy

Today's CAAF daily journal update included the denial of a petition for extraordinary relief in the Murphy capital case. Murphy v. Maggs, __ M.J. ___, Misc. No. 09-8003/AR (C.A.A.F. Jan. 15, 2009). That ruling appears to clear the way for the Murphy case to return to the trial level for resentencing -- bringing the number of ongoing trial-level capital cases to at least five (Hennis, Quintanilla, Kreutzer, Walker, Murphy).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This isn't a commissions blog, but it is an MJ blog: "Mr. Obama had suggested in the campaign that, in place of military commissions, he would prefer prosecutions in federal courts or, perhaps, in the existing military justice system, which provides legal guarantees similar to those of American civilian courts."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22gitmo.html?hp

Cloudesley Shovell said...

Back to the case at hand, US v. Murphy . . .

Murphy (50 MJ 4 (CAAF 1998)) side-stepped the statutory two-year time limit for new trial petitions in Article 73, primarily on the grounds that it was a death penalty case and the Court wanted to ensure "reliability of the result."

In light of Bowles v. Russell and the recent US v. Rodriguez, one wonders whether the statutory two-year time limit in Article 73 might not get another look. (Not to mention the required procedural step of filing with the JAG first, not directly with the CCA or CAAF.)

egn said...

Out of the at least 5 currently-pending capital trials, 4 are do-overs. There's a big fat vote of confidence for the MJ system's ability to handle death penalty cases.