Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Equal Justice for Our Military Act of 2011. The act would eliminate inequities in current law by allowing court-martialed servicemembers who face dismissal, discharge or confinement for a year or more to seek review by the United States Supreme Court. In our civilian courts today, all persons convicted of a crime, if they lose on appeal, have a right to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for discretionary review. Even enemy combatants have the right to direct appellate review in the Supreme Court. In contrast, however, our men and women in uniform do not share this same right. Our military personnel have a limited right to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. They can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court only if the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, CAAF, actually conducts a review of their case or grants a petition for extraordinary relief. In other words, if the CAAF refuses to take their case, or denies their extraordinary relief petition, the servicemember has no right to further review in the Supreme Court. For fiscal years 2008 through 2010, the CAAF denied a total of 2230 petitions for review. The CAAF also averages about 20 denials of extraordinary relief petitions every year. Taken together, this means that there are more than 750 court-martial decisions per year in which servicemembers are denied the opportunity to seek certiorari from the Supreme Court.…”