United States v. Tackett

The foundation for the majority’s determination that the accused were denied a fair trial rests upon two major conclusions both of which, in my opinion, are unsupported by the record of trial. The first conclusion is that there is a basic conflict between Tackett’s pretrial statement and the testimony of Lorentz and Pombert. The majority read Tackett’s statement as indicating he was not present at the scene throughout the incident, but rather that “he left [the car] and went back into the barracks” before Lorentz started his activities in the car. That is not the import of Tack-ett’s…