United States v. Hamilton

The majority concludes that appellant waived his post-trial complaint of command influence in Colonel Solomon’s decision to prefer charges against him. It gets there by the following two-step approach: First, charges which were signed out of coercion rather than a belief in their truth “are treated as unsigned and unsworn”; and second, “failure to object to such a defective preferral [as unsworn charges] waives the error.” 41 MJ at 36. In my view, this approach is not based on solid precedent or sound reasoning, so I cannot join in it.

First, in support of its predicate that coerced charges…