United States v. Slack

Opinion of the Court

ROBERT E. Quinn, Chief Judge:

We granted the accused’s petition for review of his conviction of wrongful appropriation of an automobile belonging to a civilian to consider the correctness of the following instruction by the law officer in regard to the sentence:

“Normally the maximum punishment will be reserved for ... a case in which there is evidence of a previous conviction involving an offense at least as serious as the one for which the accused is here on trial.”

At trial, the accused did not testify, either before findings or sentence. Evidence of certain pretrial…