LTC Terrence Lakin’s court-martial opens next week on December 14 at Fort Meade, Maryland.
I saw a photo online recently of Lakin with his beautiful family, which I won’t post here for the sake of their privacy. But I felt very sad looking at it. Lakin’s irresponsible actions gambled with their future security and family reputation. I wonder if the GOP ops behind this miserable fiasco, like Margaret Hemenway and Paul Rolf Jensen, or World Net Daily, for that matter, ever give a thought to what they have done to these kids. All the Birthers out there, every single one, who pushed this man farther and farther to self-immolation should be ashamed, including, more recently, his own brother.
It would be one thing if LTC Lakin had continued with the Birther defense. Lakin must have realized the damage he was doing to his family and to the service and himself, or he wouldn’t have fired the American Patriot Foundation and hired a non-Birther lawyer, one of the best in the military law business, to represent his interests over the Birther movement’s interests. It’s a shame the Birther movement continues to exploit Lakin in defiance of his legal strategy.
No sympathy here for LTC Lakin–he deserves what he gets–but for his children. And for the armed forces, who have better things to worry about than half-assed, unpatriotic conspiracy movements.
Col. Dwight Sullivan of CAAFlog described on The Fogbow how the military sentencing process works in a plea bargain:
In the military, the convening authority (the commanding general or other high ranking official who decided to prosecute the case) actually enters into a contract with the defendant (called an accused in military justice parlance). The convening authority agrees that if the accused pleads guilty and does whatever else he or she agrees to do, then the convening authority will reduce the accused’s sentence to an agree-upon limit. The case then goes to court-martial, where the accused pleads guilty and goes through a “Care inquiry,” during which the accused is required to convince the military judge that he or she is actually guilty. This is a lengthy process during which the accused basically has to explain in his or her own words why his or her conduct satisfied every element of the offenses to which he or she has pled guilty. Once the military judge finds the accused guilty in accordance with the pleas, the case then moves immediately into a sentencing hearing. There are no presentence reports — sentencing is an adversarial evidentiary process, much like a contested trial. At the end of the sentencing case, the sentencer (it could be the military judge alone or a panel of service members) deliberates and then announces a sentence. (For members, it generally takes a 2/3 vote for the sentence, though there are some exceptions to that rule.) Then the accused gets the lighter of the sentence adjudged or the sentence as agreed to with the convening authority. So the defense can, as we say, “beat the deal” by getting the sentencer to adjudge a more lenient sentence than that in the contract (called a PTA for pre-trial agreement) between the convening authority and the accused.
During the defense’s sentencing case, the accused can elect to either testify under oath or make an unsworn statement to the court-martial. If the accused testifies under oath, he can be (and almost invariably will be) cross-examined by the prosecutor. If the accused makes an unsworn statement, he isn’t subject to cross-examination, though the prosecution in its rebuttal case is allowed to rebut any statements of fact made during the unsworn statement, but not opinions. Military case law construing the right to make an unsworn statement holds that the accused can say just about anything he wants. In practice, because the case law is so expansive, a military judge almost never precludes the accused from saying something because she knows that if she does, there’s a pretty good chance she’ll get reversed on appeal. So, if LTC Lakin so chooses, there could indeed be an “open mike afternoon” at his court-martial during which he would have the option of delivering a birther manifesto. He would almost certainly be allowed to do so if he wants. (Of course, the sentencing authority — be it Judge Lind or a panel of Army colonels — will then be free to consider that as a matter in aggravation when determining the appropriate sentence.)
Col. Sullivan intends to attend the trial, so we can look forward to his reports on CAAFlog. A very interesting interview he had recently on Reality Check is well worth listening to. If he does attend the court-martial, Reality Check will be lucky again to have him as a guest to discuss it. Don’t miss the show next week.
