Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Supreme news

A new military cert petition has been filed at the Supreme Court. I am extremely pleased to report that it is a cert petition filed by Army DAD counsel. CPT (or is it MAJ by now?) Seth Director asks the Supreme Court to review CAAF's Daubert holding in United States v. Sanchez, 65 M.J. 145 (C.A.A.F. 2007). Sanchez v. United States, No. 07-356. The S.G.'s response is due by 17 October.
If there are any Army appellate lurkers out there, would you please share the Q.P. with us?

In other SCOTUS news, the S.G. has waived his right to respond to the three Air Force cert petitions docketed last week. Tippit v. United States, No. 07-318; Chapman v. United States, No. 07-317; Erickson v. United States, No. 07-316.

This year's long conference will be this coming Monday, when the Supremes will almost certainly deny their first three military cert petitions of the year: Monette v. United States, No. 07-5623; Phillips v. United States, No. 07-5716; and Taylor v. United States, No. 07-13.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Army DAD actually filed two certs last week.

In Sanchez, the QP was:

Whether the standard of appellate review for the admission of expert testimony at a criminal trial should be de novo in light of: (1) empirical studies suggesting that trial judges do not have the background to adequately rule on complicated issues of expert testimony; (2) the highly controversial and evolving nature of expert testimony commonly admitted at criminal proceedings; (3) the persuasiveness of expert testimony upon a lay juror; (4) the unequal access to “shaky but admissible” expert testimony for a criminal defendant; and (5) the unique concerns of a criminal trial arising from the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

In Foerster, CPT Nathan Bankson framed the issue as:

Whether the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces properly held that an affidavit prepared and sworn to by the victim of a crime and relied upon by the government to convict petitioner did not violate petitioner’s Sixth Amendment right to confrontation because the victim’s affidavit was not testimonial and also properly admissible as a business record under Military Rule of Evidence 803(6).