Court Opinion

ID: 9836928
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 03:15:33.374504+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:19.363693
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge
(concurring in the result):
RCM 704(e), Manual .for Courts-Martial, United States (1995 edition), states that “[o]nly a general court-martial convening authority may grant immunity.” (Emphasis added.) RCM 704(d) further says that any such grant “shall” be in writing. (Emphasis added.) Both provisions of law were clearly violated here. Thus, the Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) was wrong, clear and simple, on these points. The majority opinion does no service to the formulation of clear case law for the armed forces by hedging its rulings on the propriety of the SJA’s actions in this case. As T.S. Eliot said in Murder in the Cathedral, part 1 (1935):
The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
The majority opinion’s in-depth discussion of “informal” immunity might suggest to some that the SJA might have some power to grant immunity in other eases. In this regard, I note Lord Justice Bowen’s words of long ago:
[L]ike my Brothers who sit with me, I am extremely reluctant to decide anything except what is necessary for the special case, because I believe by long experience that judgments come with far more weight and gravity when they come upon points which the Judges are bound to decide, and I believe that obiter dicta, like the proverbial chickens of destiny, come home to roost sooner or later in a very uncomfortable way to the Judges who have uttered them, and are a great source of embarrassment in future cases. Therefore I abstain from putting a construction on more than it is necessary to do for this particular case.
Cooke v. New River Company, L.R. 38 C.D. 56, 70-71 (1888).
In any event, under the circumstances of this case, I agree with the majority that there was no prejudice in this case. Accordingly, I vote to affirm the decision below.