United States v. Campbell

In my view, trial counsel’s argument that the accused’s vessel was tasked with Search and Rescue (SAR) missions and that its crew would have been without a cook had the vessel been ordered to respond to a distress for some indeterminate period after his absence began exceeded the bounds of fair comment. There was no evidence in the record to support these arguments in aggravation of the offense, nor was there evidence to support the critical inference that the vessel was in a mission readiness status when the accused’s unauthorized absence began. I cannot agree that there was no fair risk…