Sexual Assault in the US Coast Guard: A Coverup and a Call for Justice
Sexual assault in the US Armed Forces is a very real and prescient issue for all service members. In April 2023, the US Department of Defense (DoD) reported that in 2022 there had been “a roughly 1% increase in overall reports of sexual assaults” with all the service branches having seen an increase in reported [...]
The Legal Possibility for Charging SEAL Eddie Gallagher with Perjury
It is well known that the United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (US SEALs) have serious problems. The SEAL community has been plagued by extreme drug use and sexual assaults and has been found to engage in the murder of one of their own Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel. All of these incidences have [...]
A Miscarriage of Justice: The Pleaing of Tony DeDolph and the Elusion of Accountability
On January 23, 2021, Chief Petty Officer Tony DeDolph of the U.S. Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) was sentenced to ten years in prison for the involuntary manslaughter of Staff Sergeant Logan Melgar of the U.S. Army Green Berets. DeDolph, “pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit assault, involuntary manslaughter, hazing, and obstruction of justice,” [...]
Trump’s Blackwater Pardons Reveal Security Contractor Impunity Tendencies Typical for Republicans
“Cheaper than water.” This is how Iraqis commented on the value of their lives after they learned that US President Donald Trump had pardoned the four Blackwater security contractors who had previously been sentenced over the death of 17 Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisur Square massacre. Sentences included life imprisonment for a first-degree murder. A child [...]
Supreme Court rules rape convictions of three military members were timely under military law
The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday in United States v. Briggs that the rape convictions of three military members were timely under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Justice Samuel Alito authored the opinion. He noted that a plain reading of the UCMJ would suggest that the former service members’ convictions were untimely. However, he [...]
The cornerstone of military justice is ensuring that commanders at all levels, called convening authorities, do not influence the lawful carrying out of investigations and prosecutions of service members who violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Developed through customs of the service over two centuries and codified by Congress in the early 1950’s, [...]
The Uniform Code of Military Justice Has Never Had Anything To Do With Justice
JURIST Guest Columnist Nathaniel R. Helms, author of No Time for Truth: The Marines, Justice, and the Haditha Incident, discusses the Haditha Incident and the military justice system ...Kenneth Englade recently offered his interpretation of the so-called Haditha Massacre, an...
JURIST Guest Columnist Kenneth Englade, discusses military justice system in the context of the Haditha incident in 2005 ...Nine years ago this week a squad from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, was returning from a routine re-supply mission...
The Man Behind the Curtain: Mandating Transparency in the Military Judicial System - Part I
JURIST Guest Columnist Robert Bracknell, a career Marine officer, discusses ways to reform the military judicial system...For the past several years, the Department of Defense and the armed services have been thrashed by the media, victim interest groups, the civilian...
During the course of the War on Terror, the US military detained hundreds of individuals as "enemy combatants"a label the US government used to denote their legal status as unlawful combatants without protections under the Geneva Conventions. With military conflicts...
