U.S. v. Johnson, 61 M.J. 195

Trial Stages: Appeals: Standards of Review, Burdens, etc.

1. a military judge’s ruling on a petition for a new trial is reviewed for abuse of discretion
2. an abuse of discretion occurs if the findings of fact upon which a ruling was predicated were not supported by evidence of record, if incorrect legal principles were used, or if the application of correct legal principles to the facts of a particular case was clearly unreasonable

Trial Stages: Petition for a New Trial: Generally

1. Art. 73, UCMJ, allows petitions for new trials on the grounds of newly discovered evidence or fraud on the court
2. requests for a new trial, and thus rehearings and reopenings of trial proceedings, are generally disfavored; relief is granted only if a manifest injustice would result absent a new trial, rehearing, or reopening based on proferred newly discovered evidence
3. when presented with a petition for new trial, the reviewing court must make a credibility determination, insofar as it must determine whether the newly discovered evidence, if considered by a court-martial in the light of all other pertinent evidence, would probably produce a substantially more favorable result for the accused; the reviewing court does not determine whether the proferred evidence is true; nor does it determine the historical facts; it merely decides if the evidence is sufficiently believable to make a more favorable result probable
4. when petitions for a new trial are submitted, this Court has the prerogative of weighing testimony at trial against the post-trial evidence to determine which is credible; consistent with federal civilian practice, this Court may review the evidence both in terms of credibility as well as of materiality; in determining whether evidence is material, this Court looks at the importance of the issue for which the evidence was offered in relation to the other issues in the case; the extent to which this issue is in dispute; and the nature of other evidence in the case pertaining to this issue
5. the denial of the accused’s request for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence was not an abuse of discretion where the evidence did not offer some new version of the facts presented at trial and where additional impeachment material and potential perjury by witnesses would probably not have produced a substantially more favorable result for the accused