Bradley Manning verdict?

[struggle4progress]

33. The prohibition on command influence is intended to ensure a fair trial, by preventing

higher-ups from deliberately applying pressures to the military justice system in manner prejudicial to the defendant, and more generally by preventing higher-ups from carelessly acting in such fashion that subordinates will believe such pressures are applied, if the result is prejudicial to the defendant

In this case, a handful of Manning supporters approached the President at a small private gathering, where apparently no one alleges any military personnel were present, and afterwards provided a mostly unintelligible recording, in which Bradley Manning's name s either never mentioned or at least is never audible. In fact, very little of the recording can be heard clearly, except for a few statements about how the world works or the US being a nation of laws, and the statement "He broke the law." Various persons have published on the web attempts at approximate reconstructed transcripts, with somewhat inconsistent results. In particular, the claim that the conversation was about Manning, although likely from some reconstructions of the recording, is not immediately obvious and may depend somewhat on the context provided by the Manning supporters who produced the recording in the first place

The tape thus has the following curious history: the people who produced the recording, and who want to use it as evidence that the President has prejudiced the Manning trial, are themselves the ones who publicized these statements, which could not possibly have been regarded as prejudicial to Manning, had the statements remained unpublicized. And moreover, due to the poor quality of the recording, the argument -- that the statements are prejudicial to Manning -- relies heavily on the context and reconstruction provided by the persons who produced the recording in the first place. That is, the claim that the President has prejudiced the proceedings is based on the publicity given to this recording, which is largely unintelligible without explanations by the publicizers to explain what the recording shows and to fill its unintelligible gaps by approximate reconstructions -- but the publicity, the explanations, and the first approximate transcripts all originate with the producers of the video. Or, to put it another way, these Manning supporters seem to have set out to prejudice the proceedings so they could argue the proceedings were prejudiced -- and the courts are unlikely to lay the blame for that at the President's feet

As the recording dates from the summer of 2012, and the charges against Manning were filed in July 2010 and in March 2011, the recording cannot have influenced the prosecutors drawing up the charges

I suppose it might be grounds for appeal, if anyone could show that any of the prosecutor or the judge had had watched the video or had read the approximate transcripts