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© 2022 Tipon Law Firm LLLC.
Court Martial Lawyer
Pretrial Investigation
Immediately upon being retained to defend you, The Tipon Law Firm will take every step necessary to gain a complete understanding of your case, including strengths and weaknesses and that facts that cannot be changed. We do the investigation OURSELVES. We don’t farm it to others, especially retired cops or investigators that aren’t defense lawyers and therefore don’t think like defense lawyers. In fact, our trial strategy often involves discrediting military or civilian law enforcement as being incompetent and sloppy investigators—which is ridiculously easy to do—so we aren’t going to rely one of their prior peers to prepare your case. We scour the law enforcement file. We wargame the case. We interview witnesses. And if we need an expert in DNA, forensics, false-confessions, or any other scientific field, we go for the best.
Some defense counsel simply rely on the military law enforcement investigation report compiled by NCIS, CID, or OSI. This is a recipe for disaster, as those reports are often stuffed with errors, critical omissions, misleading exaggerations, and lies. We’ve read military law enforcement reports that make it seem hopeless for an accused, but when we interview the same witnesses, it becomes clear that our client is innocent—it was as if we were dealing with completely different cases.
Strategic communications with military prosecutors is a key part of a fast start to winning your case. Prosecutors love to talk about how strong their case is. In the process, they almost always reveal more than they should, including weaknesses that they don’t even see. This is a huge advantage that you cannot afford to lose. Some military attorneys take the “tough-guy approach” and cut of communications with military prosecutors. In our view and experience, this is a huge mistake, one that could be catastrophic for you. It’s like conducting an attack without doing any reconnaissance of the battlefield—you just don’t do it unless you want to get surprised and massacred.
Many military defense counsel and civilian military defense lawyers simply do not independently investigate cases properly. In our view, this is mostly because it’s just easier not to. A proper investigation takes time—a lot of time. A proper investigation take effort—a lot of effort. But failing to do an exhaustive investigation into your case is a critical error that only you will pay for in the end. That won’t happen with the Tipon Law Firm.
Military law enforcement like NCIS, CID, and OSI make such a rush to judge a service member guilty, their investigations are incredibly sloppy. Investigators miss evidence, trample through crime scenes, lose evidence, and fail to ask witnesses critically important questions. This carelessness presents incredible opportunities for an accused service member that has a defense attorney that knows how to do a proper case investigation and is actually willing to do it. That may mean visiting a blood splattered room, interviewing hostile witnesses, scouring a creek bed for a phone, or a million other scenarios—a defense investigation is not work for the timid. Noel Tipon will go over every potential piece of evidence with a fine-toothed comb.
If your free defense counsel SUPPLIED BY THE GOVERNMENT (the same government coming after you) has not conducted an exhaustive investigation and extensively documented crime scene evidence, their investigation is even shoddier than the one conducted by military law enforcement. You deserve better. More importantly, you need A LOT BETTER if you want a NOT GUILTY finding.
The case investigation is the collection of the evidentiary pieces that are available in a case. Trial preparation is the proper assembly of those pieces into a winning defense. No two defense attorneys will assemble the pieces exactly the same, but some will build a winning defense and others will build a losing one.
What’s the difference between the winning and losing attorney? It almost always comes down to being able to visualize how the pieces can be put together to create reasonable doubt in the jury’s mind. Some attorneys are good at it, some aren’t. You need a court martial lawyer that’s at least good at it—great is even better
Winning at trial also comes down to having a court martial lawyer that has the dedication, physical endurance, and mental stamina to exhaustively prepare for every aspect of trial, including, jury selection, opening statements, witness cross examinations and direct examinations, objections, and closing arguments. None of these parts of a trial can be properly done “off the cuff.” Months of focused preparation are required. Some defense attorneys just aren’t willing to put that type of hard work in. That’s not Noel Tipon, and our case results prove it.
Make no mistake, a trial is a performance by the lawyers from both sides. As one commentator put it, “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” Any accused service member needs to understand that even an innocent person, represented by a weak, inexperienced, or poor defense attorney, can be convicted. So you need to be as certain as you can that your court martial lawyer is better than the government prosecutors trying to convict you. Not only does your chosen defense attorney need to know the facts of the case backwards and forwards, he must also be able to deliver those facts with the passion and energy needed to convince the jury to vote NOT GUILTY.
Cross Examination. Nothing is more crushing to a military prosecutor’s case than to have his star witness—an agent from NCIS, CID, or OSI—have their credibility and the quality of their investigation shredded by an aggressive defense cross examination. Sometimes the government’s star witness is the alleged victim or an expert brought in to convince the jury of your guilt. Regardless, for a court martial lawyer to win trials, he or she must be an expert at cross examination, as it is often the cornerstone of a winning defense strategy that leads to an acquittal.
Extraordinary Writs. If you’ve never heard of an extraordinary writ, don’t feel bad, most military defense attorneys haven’t either. Even fewer know how to petition for one. Put in simple terms, when a military judge rules against an accused service member, his defense counsel can petition a military appellate court to reverse the judge’s ruling. Noel Tipon have actually stopped an accused’s court martial—midtrial—by filing for an extraordinary writ with a higher military court. This is the type of legal expertise you get with our law firm.
© 2022 Tipon Law Firm LLLC.
Court Martial Lawyer