Court Opinion

ID: 9475662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:34:35.6278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:51.269279
License: Public Domain

FRIEDMAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
I would affirm the order of the district court dismissing the complaint.
The court remands the case to the district court to consider Cooper’s claim that his court-martial conviction of fraternization denied him due process. It reasons that he preserved this claim “for review by the district court” because he had “exhausted his military remedies with respect to the claims raised before those tribunals” by “attempt[ing] to obtain review of his court-martial conviction by every military tribunal empowered to remedy his constitutional claims.”
For me the question is not whether Cooper “exhausted his military remedies” (which he obviously did), but whether in the process of doing so he preserved the due process claim he seeks to litigate in the district court. I conclude that he did not preserve that claim.
In the trial before the court martial, Cooper orally moved “that the Government has failed to allege an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” because at the time the two enlisted women were alleged to have had sexual relations with Cooper, they were not members of his command. Cooper then stated that the “motion is in the form of a due process deprivation under these circumstances, under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution to the United States.”
In his appeal from the court-martial conviction to the Army Court of Military Review, however, Cooper (whose appellate brief was signed by five military lawyers) did not even mention any due process claim, let alone attempt to develop it. His challenge to his conviction on the fraternization charge was that there was no evidence that his conduct was prejudicial to good order and discipline because the prosecution had not established any custom in the Army that prohibited such fraternization.
The court describes this argument “as an alternative approach to arguing that he *993was denied due process because the offense was so ill-defined that he had no notice he was violating military law.” Cooper’s contention, however, was that the evidence did not support his conviction. That argument in no way asserted or even suggested that Cooper was challenging his conviction on any constitutional ground. If his lawyers intended to raise any due process claim in that appeal, one must assume they would have done so explicitly — as they did when they subsequently unsuccessfully sought to obtain further review by the United States Court of Military Appeals. I do not think that Cooper’s attempt to resurrect his due process claim in seeking review by the latter tribunal sufficed to revive a claim he waived by failing to assert it before the Army Court of Military Review.