United States v. Priest

Opinion of the Court

Ferguson, Judge:

We are concerned in this case with whether the pretrial activities of the law officer, specifically a conference he had with the staff judge advocate concerning Additional Charge I and its specification,1 disqualified him from further participation in the trial.

During an out-of-court hearing to inquire into a plea of guilty to all of the charges and specifications, the law officer stated:

“. . . We’ll pass then to Additional Charge I which alleges a violation of paragraph 8 of USARV Regulation 210-5. This morning before we convened I read over USARV…