United States v. Holstlaw

41 M.J. 552, 1994 CCA LEXIS 6, 1994 WL 700952
CourtNavy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals
DecidedNovember 10, 1994
DocketNMCM 94 00842
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 41 M.J. 552 (United States v. Holstlaw) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Holstlaw, 41 M.J. 552, 1994 CCA LEXIS 6, 1994 WL 700952 (N.M. 1994).

Opinion

ORR, Senior Judge:

This case was tried on 12 February 1992, but more than 2 years elapsed before it was acted upon. By that time, the officer who had originally convened the court-martial had been relieved, and his command no longer existed. Nothing in the conduct of the trial or the preparation of the record would appear to justify that delay because the appellant pled guilty pursuant to the terms of a pretrial agreement, the record of trial was less than 50 pages in length, and the military judge authenticated the record less than 6 weeks after the trial was concluded. Nevertheless, this delay may have only been a contributing factor. The primary problems concern the absence of any record of a proceeding that appears to have been held to consider whether the appellant had complied with the terms of a pretrial agreement and whether the appellant was thereby required to serve more of the adjudged sentence to confinement than the agreement permitted.

Consistent with his pleas, the appellant was convicted of 19 separate offenses: (1), unlawfully entering another marine’s barracks room with the intent to steal; (2), attempting to steal a ear stereo from that other marine; (3), stealing four checks from a second marine; (4)-(7), forging those four checks, totaling $600.00, at four separate times; (8)-(16), uttering ten checks, totaling $569.05, with the intent to defraud; and (17)— (19), dishonorably failing to maintain sufficient funds in the issuance of three cheeks totaling $314.50. These offenses were, respectively, violations of Articles 130, 80, 121, 123, 123a, and 134, Uniform Code of Military Justice [UCMJ], 10 U.S.C. §§ 930, 880, 921, 923, 923a, 934. The appellant was sentenced by the military judge to confinement for 5 months, forfeiture of $500.00 pay per month for 5 months, reduction to pay grade E-l, and a bad-conduct discharge.

When the substitute convening authority (a successor in command of a unit reconstituted from the unit the appellant was assigned to at the time of trial) acted, he approved the sentence as adjudged but suspended the execution of the bad-conduct discharge for 12 months from the date of the action. The terms of the pretrial agreement, however, required that, if a punitive discharge was awarded, any confinement adjudged in excess of 60 days would be suspended for 12 months from the date of the action. A punitive discharge could be approved if adjudged.

The pretrial agreement also contained a paragraph in which the appellant agreed to provide full restitution by 1 April 1992 for the amounts appearing on the checks written in 17 of the offenses listed on the charge sheet. In that same paragraph, the appellant acknowledged that his failure to make restitution as agreed “may cause the convening authority to vacate any portion of my sentence suspended pursuant to the maximum sentence appendix to this agreement.” Appellate Exhibit I, ¶ 15 at 3. In a separate paragraph, the appellant also acknowledged his understanding that any act of misconduct constituting an offense under the UCMJ after the agreement was signed could release the convening authority from the limitations of the agreement. Id., ¶ 12 at 2.

From evidence recently submitted to us in response to our order, referred to below, it appears that the appellant served the 60 days of confinement required under the terms of [554]*554the agreement immediately after trial and he was released from the brig on 1 April 1992, shortly after the record of trial was authenticated. Sixteen months then elapsed before the staff judge advocate [SJA] made his recommendation for the convening authority on 26 July 1993. What happened to the appellant during that 16-month period is somewhat uncertain.

The SJA advised the convening authority (a) that the appellant had made no attempt to pay restitution by the 1 April 1992 date specified in the pretrial agreement,1 (b) that the terms of the agreement have become “null and void,” and (c) that the appellant would be confined to serve the remaining portion of his sentence as soon as the convening authority acted to approve the sentence. The SJA in this case was actually the staff judge advocate for the officer exercising general court-martial jurisdiction over the convening authority and the appellant.

On 4 October 1993, the trial defense counsel submitted a combined response to the SJA’s recommendation and clemency request, in which he complained, in essence, that the recommendation ignored the fact that the appellant had already been required to serve the bulk of the “suspended confinement” and that the record of trial was not complete because a record of the vacation proceeding was not attached to the record of trial. Counsel also stated that (a) the officer who had convened the court-martial had held a vacation proceeding on 17 July 1992 to consider the appellant’s failure to make restitution and a 21-day unauthorized absence, and (b) based upon that hearing, that officer had “vacated 60 days of suspended confinement which ... [the appellant] subsequently served.” From this premise, the trial defense counsel argued that, since the appellant had committed no subsequent acts of misconduct, he should not be further punished. This information was subsequently recounted in an affidavit from the trial defense counsel on 13 December 1993, which is attached to the counsel’s 12 December 1993 addendum to his initial clemency request. In that addendum, the trial defense counsel also complained about the 22-month delay already encountered in the post-trial review of the appellant’s court-martial.

Almost 2 months later, on 3 February 1994, the SJA issued an addendum to his initial recommendation. Concerning his earlier conclusion that the pretrial agreement was null and void, the SJA stated that “[t]his office was not notified of any vacation hearing,” and based on other information he had obtained, he concluded that the appellant “has served all awarded confinement.” The SJA then recommended that the substitute convening authority approve the sentence as adjudged.

Based upon this state of the record, we ordered the Government (a) to identify all incarceration and release dates of the appellant’s actual service of his sentence to confinement; (b) to produce any available evidence of any hearing or other fact-finding procedure to determine whether the appellant had made restitution as promised in the pretrial agreement; and, (c) to produce information as to whether the appellant is still a member of the U.S. Marine Corps on active duty and, if so, when he reenlisted and for what period. The last request was based on the anomaly presented by the fact that the appellant’s enlistment, as reflected in the record of trial, should have expired in 1992, and the substitute convening authority suspending a punitive discharge in 1994 for a 12-month period beginning in that same year, 1994.

[555]*555As part of that same order, we asked the appellant to file a brief on the following specified issue once the Government had provided the requested information:

DID THE CONVENING AUTHORITY ERR IN ORDERING THE APPELLANT’S SENTENCE TO CONFINEMENT EXECUTED AS ADJUDGED IN APPARENT RELIANCE UPON THE STAFF JUDGE ADVOCATE’S ADVICE THAT THE PRETRIAL AGREEMENT WAS NULL AND VOID BECAUSE THE APPELLANT HAD FAILED TO MAKE POST-TRIAL RESTITUTION AS PROMISED IN THE AGREEMENT? See, e.g., United States v. Dawson,2 10 M.J. 142 (C.M.A. 1981); Rule for Courts-Martial 705(c)(1)(B).

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Related

United States v. Mitchell
46 M.J. 840 (Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, 1997)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
41 M.J. 552, 1994 CCA LEXIS 6, 1994 WL 700952, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-holstlaw-nmcca-1994.