United States v. Torres

This case was properly tried under the traditional rules that military status raises amenability to military criminal law and that military status, once acquired, persists until terminated according to law. I write separately and overlong to emphasize the importance of the traditional rules and to contest certain threatened erosions of the proper scope of those rules.1

I reject appellant’s contention and the minority view that the Government was guilty of a misdeed equivalent to an individual soldier’s violation of Article 92(1), Uniform Code of Military Justice, such that it is estopped to…