United States v. Kimble

DECISION

KASTL, Senior Judge:

Under the Confrontation Clause, how far must the Government go to secure the presence of a witness before he or she can be considered “unavailable?" Such is the question before us today. Like the recent case of United States v. Ferdinand, 29 M.J. 164 (C.M.A.1989), we find that the Government did not go far enough to aggressively subpoena a necessary witness. At the same time — as in Ferdinand — we are convinced that admission of hearsay statements of the absent witness was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. We will address this issue and others. We affirm.

Factual…