The DoD has formally published the proposed changes to the MCM necessary to implement the Military Justice Act of 2016 (previously discussed here).

The Federal Register notice is available here.

The Regulations.gov folder is available here.

The Regulations.gov folder includes a single, 636-page PDF titled Annex 1 & 2. Annex 1 is proposed revisions to the current MCM to take effect immediately upon promulgation by the President. Annex 2 is proposed revisions to take effect with the changes made my the MJA (anticipated to occur on January 1, 2019).

The Joint Service Committee is accepting public comments (including electronically at the Regulations.gov link above) and will hold a public meeting in August:

Comments on the proposed changes must be received no later than September 11, 2017. A public meeting for comments will be held on August 3, 2017, from 10 a.m. until noon, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces building, 450 E Street, NW., Washington, DC 20442-0001. Commentators will be heard in order of arrival and check-in, and will be limited to five minutes.

I plan to both comment and attend the public meeting.

The Federal Register notice includes a request for comment on a specific proposed change to R.C.M. 1103A:

The Department of Defense also requests comments on a proposal by a Federal Advisory Committee, the Judicial Proceedings Since Fiscal Year 2012 Amendments Panel (JPP). The JPP’s June 2017 report suggested that Rule for Courts-Martial 1103A as proposed by Annex 1 and Rule for Courts-Martial 1113 as proposed by Annex 2 be further revised to include the following: “Prior to a decision to permit examination of material described in this subparagraph, notice and an opportunity to be heard shall be given to any person whose records are about to be examined and to appellate counsel.” The report making that recommendation is available at http://jpp.whs.mil/​Public/​docs/​08-Panel_​Reports/​07_​JPP_​VictimsAppRights_​Report_​Final_​20170602.pdf. The Department invites public comment on the JPP’s proposal.

R.C.M. 1103A allows appellate authorities – including counsel for the Government divisions and the appellant – to examine sealed matters attached to a record of trial. These sealed matters could – under increasingly rare circumstances – include private information pertaining to an alleged victim (such as mental health records) that were reviewed in camera but not otherwise disclosed at trial.

Last year the Air Force Appellate Government Division asked CAAF to prevent appellate defense counsel from reviewing such material, but CAAF rebuffed the request (discussed here and here). The JSC then proposed changing the R.C.M. to prevent such review (noted here). I submitted a public comment (discussed here) opposing the change. The change persists in this new round of proposals, and the JSC does not offer any rationale for it.

Our #1 Military Justice Story of 2016 was the Military Justice Act of 2016. The Act makes the most significant changes to the UCMJ since the Military Justice Act of 1983. The changes won’t take effect until President Trump establishes an effective date that need only be no later than January 1, 2019.

Today a reader forwarded me the proposed revision to the MCM. The DoD will soon publish this proposal on the internet (pursuant to this approval dated Monday). The proposal includes the following three documents (each item is a link to the document hosted on CAAFlog):

• A draft Executive Order indicating an effective date for the MJA of January 1, 2019.

• Annex 1 to the draft Executive Order, making changes effective immediately once the Order is signed (at a glance, these change appear to be the JSC proposed changes for 2017 discussed in this post, about which I submitted a public comment discussed in this post).

• Annex 2 to the draft Executive Order, making changes incorporating the MJA. Annex 2 is 619 pages and reproduces Parts I-V of the MCM in their entirety. It also includes an Appendix 2.1 (PDF page 605) containing non-binding disposition guidance for charges, and an Appendix 12A (PDF page 611) listing Presidentially-prescribed lesser included offenses.

Our #1 Military Justice Story of 2016 is the Military Justice Act of 2016, passed as Division E of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 and signed into law by President Obama on December 23, 2016.

A bookmarked PDF of the MJA is available here.

The Act was the product of the Military Justice Review Group, an internal DoD working group created by the Secretary of Defense to conduct a comprehensive review of the UCMJ. As an internal group the MJRG’s meetings and deliberations were closed to the public, and there was little subsequent public debate about the group’s 1,302 page report and legislative proposal. The House and Senate adopted the MJRG’s legislative proposal in differing degrees, and the final legislation was worked out in conference committee. It’s not everything the DoD wanted, but it’s pretty close, and it’s the most significant changes to the UCMJ since the Military Justice Act of 1983.

The changes won’t take effect until the President establishes an effective date that need only be sometime before January 1, 2019 (1st day of the 1st month two years after enactment). Yet while Congress gave the President up to two years to make the Act effective, it only allowed one year for revision of the Manual for Courts-Martial (perhaps in recognition of the fact that the White House has been painfully slow to act on draft executive orders forwarded by the Joint Service Committee).

Of course we’ll analyze the MJA in 2017, and we’ll keep reporting on developments in military justice for the eleventh year. Stay tuned.

The FY17 NDAA (link) – which includes major changes to the UCMJ (noted here) – has passed Congress and was sent to the President for signature on Wednesday.

The long awaited report of the conference committee considering the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 was just released. It is available here: https://rules.house.gov/conference-report/s-2943

The conference version of the NDAA includes a great many significant changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In particular, the legislation adopts many – but not all – of the changes proposed by the Military Justice Review Group.

Some significant notes:

• The conference version does not eliminate members sentencing in non-capital cases. Instead, § 5182 amends Article 25 to give the accused the option to elect sentencing by members (when trial was before members) after the findings are announced.

• § 5164 of the conference version amends Article 20 to state that “a summary court-martial is a non-criminal forum. A finding of guilty at a summary court-martial does not constitute a criminal conviction.”

• § 5205 modifies a staff judge advocate’s pretrial advice to require only a probable cause determination rather than the current conclusion that “the specification is warranted by the evidence.”

• § 5330 modifies Article 66 to require automatic review by the courts of criminal appeals only in cases that include death, dismissal, a dishonorable or bad-conduct discharge, or confinement for two years or more. In cases involving confinement for more than six months or more (but less than two years) an accused may petition for review.

Edited to add: • § 5330 also preserves the requirement that a CCA “may affirm only such findings of guilty, and the sentence or such part or amount of the sentence, as the Court finds correct in law and fact and determines, on the basis of the entire record, should be approved.”

• § 5301 modifies Article 56 to allow the prosecution to appeal a sentence on the grounds that “(A) the sentence violates the law; or (B) the sentence is plainly unreasonable.”

• § 5301 modifies Article 56 requires a sentence adjudged by a military judge alone to be segmented (confinement and fine only) by offense. Where sentencing is by members, the court-martial will continue to adjudge a single sentence for all offenses.