Court Opinion

ID: 9836905
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 03:15:28.405156+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:19.254195
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge
(concurring in part and in the result):
I concur in the result on parts I and II of the majority opinion. In my view, Major General Meade should have been produced for the limited purpose of establishing whether he referred charges against Captain Rock-wood for personal rather than official reasons. See generally Art. 46, Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 USC § 846, and RCM 703(b)(1), Manual for Courts-Martial, United States (1994 ed.). Nevertheless, I would not reverse appellant’s conviction.
Before Captain Rockwood went to the prison in Haiti, he lodged an official Inspector General’s (IG) complaint against numerous members of Major General Meade’s staff for not protecting political prisoners. Once Major General Meade’s command was charged by Captain Rockwood with misconduct (a highly unusual event), a reasonable person might conclude that the General may have had a personal interest in punishing Captain Rockwood, ie., retaliation for embarrassing his command. Since Rockwood had been charged for misconduct after he had filed the IG complaint, Rockwood should have been able to at least question Major General Meade about any personal motives on his part in referring these criminal charges to court-martial. See Arts. 1(9) and 22(b), UCMJ, 10 USC §§ 801(9) and 822(b). As Justice Frankfurter said in Caritativo v. California, 357 U.S. 549, 558, 78 S.Ct. 1263, 2 L.Ed.2d 1531 (1958):
Audi alteram partem — hear the other side! — a demand made insistently through the centuries, is now a command, spoken with the voice of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, ... whenever any individual, however lowly and unfortunate, asserts a legal claim.
However, notwithstanding the error made by the trial judge in not ordering a possible accuser under Article 22(a) to be questioned about his motives in referring charges against Captain Rockwood, I would hold this error harmless. See United States v. Jeter, 35 MJ 442, 446-47 (CMA 1992) (holding defect in referral by accuser not jurisdictional). In my view, any reasonable Division commander, given the actions of appellant as reported to Major General Meade, would have brought these charges against him. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996) (if probable cause existed to stop a person for a traffic violation, actual motivation of officer for stop is irrelevant).
Accordingly, I join the majority in affirming this case.