Not much in the way of interest in a strictly by the book formality. Motions and witness requests are due August 20, 2010. Replies are due August 27. Two Article 39(a), UCMJ, sessions have been scheduled for September 2 and September 14. Trial is scheduled for October 13–15, 2010.
Thanks to the Military Law & Justice blog.
The Lakin arraignment was held at Ft. Belvoir today and it turned out to be more than just a reading of the charges and entering a plea. Lakin and company were 15 minutes late a la Orly and they entered a deferred plea. The defense wants to file a motion to dismiss and enter a plea for Lakin after that is decided. The judge set August 20 as the deadline for motions and hearings on the motions will be held in early September. If the CM goes to trial that would begin on October 13.
The only chance he might have for slightly better prison arrangements is an insanity plea.
Wouldn’t it be hypocritical for LTC Lakin to follow the orders of COL Denise Lind, the presiding judge in these legal proceedings?
And did Lakin accept pay for military service and given orders to subordinates since January 20th, 2009?
Logically, his orders would have been just as unlawful and all of them should have been disobeyed and his salary wouldn’t have had lawful authorization.
from our friends at Politijab:
At the conclusion of the arraignment, Lakin was ordered not to speak with the press and was taken back to Reed under military escort, surprising and disturbinga civilian lawyer who has been working on his case.
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“This was completely inappropriate. Col Lakin was brought here and taken away from here as if he was a common criminal. He was prohibited from talking to the press for two minutes; he was prohibited from talking to anybody, even me,” Paul Rolf Jenson said
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I don’t think it would be hard to surprise Jensen. But he was already quite disturbed.
“…as if he was a common criminal”, totally appropiate! General Petraeus is serving and following onders as a patriots should, why can’t this traitor do the same.
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Well, duh!
You got to love this guy. I hope he shows more respect to the court.
I have to agree with the dog bite attorney. Lakin is an extraordinary criminal. I wonder if they’ll keep in touch when Lakin serves his prison time? Maybe Lakin can get a prison tat that says:
I <3 ROLFIE ! XOXO
Majority Will, there will be people who have donated to Lakin’s cause who will keep in touch with him. However, I do believe that many will drop him like a hot potato when he no longer serves their purpose (when he goes to jail).
“Col Lakin was brought here and taken away from here as if he was a common criminal.”
Judge Smails: You know, you should play with Dr. Beeper and myself. I mean, he’s been club champion for three years running and I’m no slouch myself.
Ty Webb: Don’t sell yourself short Judge, you’re a tremendous slouch.
Jensen will probably continue to milk his cash cow for as long as he can with pleas to birthers to help Lakin in appeals. So gullible.
The ironically-named safeguardourconstitution.com was telling Lakin’s supporters who were planning to attend that he would be able to speak with them after the arraignment. I guess that didn’t work out too well. It apparently didn’t occur to them that soldiers don’t have the right to hold press conferences or shmooze with civilians when they are on duty.
Has anyone seen any information on whether any of Lakin’s fans actually showed up? Elsewhere I read that the courtroom was full of officers in fatigues. I wonder if they deliberately packed the courtroom with officers to keep the riff-raff out?
They should have filled the courtroom with wounded soldiers returning from battle in Afghanistan. I doubt they would be sympathetic.
This was a comment at Huffington Post today:
Christian Schultz
I’m in the Army currently deployed to Afghanistan on my 4th tour. Served in Iraq as well.
Lt. Col. Lakin, I think you are a traitor to the US, the Army, and the soldiers currently engaging the enemy that need you to provide good medical care.
You have violated every oath you have ever taken.
You are a traitor plain and simple. Your actions disgust me. You are the most vile of people ever to walk this planet.
If one soldier dies in Afghanistan because you were not available to provide medical care I want you charged with murder.
Funny how your immediate supervisor is the ONLY Medal of Honor recipient currently on active duty.
You should learn some things from him. Like honor, duty and service.
You think those of us on the ground could care less about Pres. Obama? I guarantee you he is the LAST think we would ever think about. Staying alive, keeping our buddies alive and doing are job to get back to our families. Not politics.
Disgusting. Simply disgusting. The rage we feel about your actions is unbelievable.
“I sent lads younger than you to the chair. I didn’t have to, but I felt I OWED it to them.”
NICE ! !
I feel you deserve a reward so . . .
Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-lagunga.
Now you have that going for you, which is nice.
I couldn’t agree more with Mr Schultz.
I couldn’t agree more.
Hear! Hear! I emphatically agree.
Fort Belvoir, Virginia (CNN) — Charges against the Army officer who refused deployment to Afghanistan because he says President Barack Obama doesn’t have the authority to send him, should be thrown out says his attorney, Paul Jensen.
Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin went before a military judge — and a standing-room-only courtroom — in Virginia on Friday to face three charges of disobeying a lawful order, one count of missing movement (not deploying with his unit) and one count of dereliction of duty.
He did not enter a plea at the arraignment hearing, and Jensen asked to defer any plea until after the court could consider a motion to dismiss the case.
Judge Denise Lind, an Army colonel who was wearing basic camouflage fatigues under her black robes, agreed to the request and gave Lakin’s attorneys until August 20 to file a motion to dismiss. Both the prosecution and the defense will then have until August 27 to formulate and send written responses to the motion. Hearings on the motion will follow on September 2 and September 14. Future hearings in the case will be at Fort Meade, Maryland.
If the charges are not dismissed, court martial proceedings will begin on October 13.
Lakin and his legal team — Jensen, Jensen’s assistant and Lakin’s free-of-cost military attorney — arrived 15 minutes late, then the lawyers went into a meeting with Lind. The colonel remained in the 34-seat courtroom, which was full of soldiers, primarily officers, all wearing basic camouflage fatigues.
Video: Some doubt Obama was born in U.S.
Video: Obama birth certificate demanded
Video: The GOP’s ‘birther problem’ RELATED TOPICS
Barack Obama
Lakin smiled once while talking with Jensen’s assistant but otherwise didn’t convey much emotion or say much except “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am” to the judge.
In addition to pushing back his plea, Lakin waived the opportunity to choose whether a judge or jury would decide his fate.
Lakin is a decorated Army doctor and an 18-year veteran who is now facing court martial for disobeying orders to ship out for another tour of duty in Afghanistan. He specializes as a primary care physician and flight surgeon. Doctors in those positions often fly in medevac helicopters in the war zone.
Lakin says the orders are illegal because, he claims, Obama — the commander in chief — has not proven he was born in this country and is therefore ineligible to be president. Lakin wants Obama to produce his birth certificate.
“It’s a fundamental of the Constitution, and my oath of office is to the Constitution. And I believe we need truth on this matter,” Lakin told CNN’s “AC 360” in May.
Two newspapers in Honolulu, Hawaii, published announcements of Obama’s birth there in August, 1961. The Republican governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, has recently certified Obama’s birth certificate as legitimate.
“I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health,” Lingle recently told WABC. “The president was in fact born at Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that’s just a fact.”
“It’s been established he was born here,” the governor continued. “I can understand why people want to make certain that the constitutional requirement of being a natural-born American citizen … but the question has been asked and answered. And I think just we should all move on now.”
Despite the evidence, roughly a quarter of Americans remains skeptical, including Lakin and other so-called “birthers.”
Birthers have argued that Obama was not born in Hawaii, or that if he was, his citizenship was invalidated by living overseas as a child.
Lakin has been steadfast in his own defense.
“I am not guilty of these charges, and will plead ‘not guilty’ to them because of my conviction that our commander in chief may be ineligible under the United States Constitution to serve in that highest of all offices,” Lakin said in a news release issued this week by the American Patriot Foundation — a group that has established a fund for his legal defense.
“The truth matters. The Constitution matters,” he said. “If President Obama is a natural-born citizen, then the American people deserve to see proof, and if he is not, then I believe the orders in this case were illegal.”
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/06/birther.court.martial/index.html?hpt=T1
It’s not going to happen, of course, but if Lakin prevailed on his motion to dismiss, that would be the end of his discovery requests.
Interesting thought. If he got his wish he could go on drawing his paycheck and picking the orders that he wanted to obey. He could keep on whining about his uncertainty about the legitimacy of his Commander in Chief for another two years until he has his 20 years and retire.
I thought of LTC Lakin today when I saw the article about the civilian medical personnel who died in Afghanistan trying to help their fellow human beings. It is interesting how different people choose to practice their trade. Some are heroes and some are ……
Another use of that pesky word “certified.” Lakin will be a great example of why birthers are wrong, out doing Orly Taitz. Even with her $20,000. Also, out doing the soldier who got fired from his job after his order was rescinded.
Very insightful. I think the motion to dismiss is probably just a step to hang some publicity on, and make a public argument why it SHOULD be dismissed and make the Army appear arbitrary and cruel when the trot out some regulation that makes it impossible.
Not gonna happen, there ar NO grounds to dismiss whatsoever.
The charges are simple, factual, directly linked to specific elements of the UCMJ, he was councelled extensively. he was informed of precisley the consequences of his actions if he followed through.
Since then he has by action and self documented activity demonstrated his knowing and wilful intent.
He has both civilian and military representation and all the processes and procedures have been painfully documented and followed.
The military does NOT see this as some nebulous Birfer action they can just slap on the wrist and dismiss casually. This cuts to some of the fundamental premises of the US military,
Minor little items like subordination to the civilian authority, adherence to lawful orders, obedience to the chain of command, support of the Constitution and the law, silly little matters.
No dismissal, no discovery.
Jensen is probably following his standard tactic in dog bite cases. He is in for such a shock.
Taitz has a post on her blog about LTC Lakin, which she begins as she often does by reposting a comment to another post, which reads in part:
So this commenter is of the opinion that all the officers currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are “sniveling back slapping robots”. Nice way to show respect for the troops.
I have a feeling I know what Rolf is up to here. Knowing that, when this goes to trial, none of the birther stuff will be allowed in, expect him to jam it all into the motion to dismiss. Just as in Orly and Mario’s appeals, the mere fact that it is irrelevant will have no bearing on him using this as a forum to get it out there. It will stir up the faithful, all of whom will post comments about what a masterpiece of legal writing it is. Then they’ll all get to complain about how yet another court failed to rule on the merits.
One significant difference with Jensen is that he has so far posted none of his own filings. If he doesn’t post it, how will the birthers get all excited about what’s in it?