Jakalien J. Cook v. United States

For almost all non-capital offenses from the timeframe of Petitioner’s convictions, criminal defendants in courts-martial are sentenced in accordance with statutorily or presidentially prescribed ranges within the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), not with a set of sentencing guidelines.1 When a military judge incorrectly calculates the applicable confinement range, the sentence adjudicator, a panel of military members or the military judge, must adjudge a sentence within the resulting erroneous range. In the present case, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) affirmed the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals (AFCCA) and decided that an incorrect calculation of the applicable confinement range does not inherently undermine the fairness of the sentencing process. Therefore, the CAAF determined that the incorrect calculation does not implicate due process rights, and the issue can be waived at trial. The question presented is: Whether a criminal defendant can waive a judge’s incorrect maximum punishment calculation. 1 Military sentencing parameters which the President prescribed on July 28, 2023, apply only in cases in which all findings of guilty are for offenses committed on or after December 28, 2023, and are not relevant to this petition. See Exec. Order No. 14103, 88 Fed. Reg. 50535, § 3 (July 28, 2023); Department of the Air Force Instruction (DAFI) 51-201, Administration of Military Justice (Jan. 24, 2024), ¶ 19.16. A few Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) offenses, although none of which Petitioner was convicted, have statutory mandatory minimum sentences.