Source: https://www.court-martial-ucmj.com/category/constitution/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 03:10:44+00:00

Document:
[D]istrict courts generally enjoy a fair amount of discretion in choosing the procedures they find most helpful for resolving pretrial motions, including whether to take the matter on the briefs, hear oral argument, or hold an evidentiary hearing. And often enough courts will choose to err on the side of granting more process than might be strictly necessary in order to ensure not only that justice is done but that justice is seen to be done. Whether because of intuition born of experience that a meritorious issue may lurk in an imperfectly drawn application, or simply out of a jealous wish to guard individual rights against governmental intrusions, judges sometimes allow a claimant a fuller hearing than the law demands. In a democratic legal order built on the promise of due process and the vindication of individual rights that’s often thought laudable or at least generally permissible — and in any event not the stuff of automatic reversal.
United States v. Herrera, __ F.3d ___ (10th Cir. 2015).
Direct comments on the exercise of the right to silence are usually quite clear and should draw an immediate objection. Our friends at federalevidence review have a comment. What isn’t so clear are indirect or implied or subtle comments. This is a particular bugaboo of my when LE agents and trial counsel stray from the correct path. This involves judgment and discretion on whether to object.
It is coming up on fifty years since the Supreme Court clarified as part of Fifth Amendment jurisprudence that a defendant’s right against self-incrimination is violated by introduction of evidence that only indirectly comments on a defendant’s failure to respond to government charges. See, e.g., Griffin v. California , 380 U.S. 609, 615 (1965) (“We … hold that the Fifth Amendment … forbids either comment by the prosecution on the accused’s silence [at trial] or instructions by the court that such silence is evidence of guilt.”) The normal test of the violation of this requirement is that the evidence would “naturally and necessarily” be construed as a comment on the defendant’s silence. The Seventh Circuit recently examined this exclusion, explaining and describing a standard approach to dealing with evidence that possibly strays into this type of constitutional violation.
Result – statements suppressed, and will be in the 9th because of Sessoms v. Runnels, No. 08-17790, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 17206 (9th Cir. 2012) Wow. What about Davis v. United States?
Davis doesn’t apply because the ambiguous request came BEFORE the accused was advised of his Miranda rights. So, why isn’t there a similar situation for an accused who makes an ambiguous request prior to Article 31, UCMJ, warnings.
Nonetheless, a critical factual distinction between Sessoms’s statements and those evaluated by the Court in both Davis and Berghuis remains: Sessoms made his statements before he was informed of his rights under Miranda. The Miranda Court held that the coercive atmosphere of interrogation makes it essential for a suspect to be “given a full and effective warning of his rights at the outset of the interrogation process.” 384 U.S. at 445. As the Court stressed, when “the police [have] not advised the defendant of his constitutional privilege . . . at the outset of the interrogation,” the suspect’s “abdication of [that] constitutional privilege—the choice on his part to speak to the police—[is] not made knowingly or competently because of the failure to apprise him of his rights.” Id. at 465 (citing Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 (1964)).
The new Mil. R. Evid. may not apply to any offense committed prior to it’s effective date? Is there an argument that application to an offense prior to the effective date violates the ex-post facto clause. See Calder v. Bull, 100 U.S. 1 (1798).
1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender.
Here is a link to Orin Kerr’s review of Fourth Amendment cases from the 2011 SCOTUS term.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.