United States v. Edwards

Opinion of the Court

In this appeal from a general court-martial conviction, this Court agreed to consider “[wjhether under the circumstances of this case a fine was properly included in the sentence. See United States v. Williams, 18 M.J. 186 (C.M.A.1984).” We conclude that it was not.

In Williams, we were concerned with the “elemental fair play” of imposing a fine as part of a sentence when the accused had no notice of any sort that this was a possibility. We held “that unless the pretrial agreement specifically mentions the possibility of a fine or there is other evidence that the accused…