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The United States Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals will hear arument in the case of U.S. v. Abdul-Rahman at George Mason School of Law, Room 221, on Friday, February 20, 2004, beginning at 1:00 p.m. There are two issued to be argued: (1) whether the court-martial conviction for consensual sodomy violated vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, as explicated in Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S. Ct. 2472 (2003); and (2) whether the military judge erred in failing to dismiss the sodomy offense as multiplicious with an offense of violating a lawful general order.
The argument is open to the public.
U.S. v. Abdul-Rahman
George Mason School of Law, Room 221, February 20, 2004
At 1 P.M.
Appellate Argument On The Constitutionality of A Military
Conviction For Sodomy
Appellate Defense Counsel: LCDR Nancy J. Truax, USCG
Appellate Government Counsel: LCDR John C. Luce Jr., USCG
After pleading guilty, Seaman Apprentice Shams I. Abdul-Rahman, USCG, the Appellant in this case, was convicted by general court-martial of, among other things, a violation of Article 125, Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), 10 U.S.C. 925, the statute prohibiting sodomy within the military. It provides as follows:
(a) any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight is sufficient to complete the offense.
(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
As part of his guilty plea, Appellant admitted entering the women’s berthing, or sleeping, area of his ship during the evening hours of October 17, 2002, and committing sodomy with a third class female cadet who was lying in her bunk. Based on this same act, he was also convicted, pursuant to his plea, of failure to obey a lawful general order prohibiting sexually intimate behavior aboard a Coast Guard vessel. Thereafter, he was sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge and confinement for 180 days, which has been approved by the officer who convened the court. The case is now before the Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals for disposition, and appellate counsel will orally argue the previously noted issues.
Each counsel is allotted thirty minutes for argument before the Coast Guard Court. After a decision is subsequently issued, the case can be appealed to the next higher court for the military, the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which is a court composed of five civilian judges appointed by the President of the United States to review appeals from all the service courts of criminal appeals. Decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces are then subject to review by the United States Supreme Court by writ of certiorari. The potential in this case for ultimate review by the Supreme Court is certainly present since the applicability to the military of that court’s Lawrence v. Texas decision will be argued.
Upon completion of argument in U. S. v. Abdul-Rahman, the Court will adjourn the case, and return immediately to entertain questions not pertaining to the case. Questions may also be directed to counsel.
The Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals is one of four service intermediate appellate courts that review the records in each case of trial by court-martial within the Coast Guard in which the sentence, as approved by the officer who convened the court, extends to death, dismissal of a commissioned officer, cadet, or midshipman, dishonorable or bad-conduct discharge, or confinement for one year or more. The Coast Guard Court is composed of five appellate military judges who have been assigned to the Court by the Judge Advocate General of the Coast Guard. The judges are a mix of Coast Guard commissioned officers and civilians who are members of a bar of a Federal court or the highest court of a State.
The Coast Guard Court is located at 4200 Wilson Boulevard in Suite 790. Arguments are normally held in the courtroom at that location and are open to the public. The hearing at George Mason is part of “Project Outreach,” a program in which the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and the service courts of criminal appeals have taken their hearings to the service academies and various law schools in an effort to provide a broader understanding of the military’s criminal justice system. An accused is represented free of charge at trial and on appeal by military counsel.
Court’s Website: www.uscg.mil/legal/cca/index.htm