Dwight H. Sullivan is an American military officer and lawyer. From 2005 to 2007, he served as the Chief Defense Counsel for the

Office of Military Commissions ThGuantanamo military commissionswere established by President George W. Bush – through a Military Order – on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of e ...

. In 2007, he became a civilian lawyer working for the Air Force doing death penalty defense appellate work. Sullivan is a

colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge ...

in the

United States Marine Corps Reserve The Marine Forces Reserve (MARFORRES or MFR), also known as the United States Marine Corps Reserve (USMCR) and the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Reserve, is the reserve force of the United States Marine Corps. It is the largest command, by assigned p ...

. He is a graduate of the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the Flagship un ...

and the

University of Virginia School of Law The University of Virginia School of Law (Virginia Law or UVA Law) is the law school of the University of Virginia, a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson as part of his "academical v ...

. Prior to his role in defending the Guantanamo Bay detainees he worked with the

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; ...

office of the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". ...

Work on CAAFlog

Sullivan is the founder of CAAFlog, a blog devoted to current topics in U.S. military law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). CAAFlog derives the first part of its name from the acronym for the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF), an intermediate appellate court with jurisdiction over certain courts-martial in accordance with Article 67 of the UCMJ (Title 10, United States Code, Section 867). CAAFlog currently features over a dozen contributors with experience in the field of U.S. military law. In 2008, Sullivan spotted an error in the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision in ''

Kennedy v. Louisiana ''Kennedy v. Louisiana'', 554 U.S. 407 (2008), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause prohibits imposing the death penalty for the rape of a ch ...

.'' The court wrote that no U.S. federal jurisdiction authorized the death penalty for child rape, but Sullivan pointed out that this was not true because Congress had specifically authorized the death penalty for such offenses as part of the 2006 amendments to the UCMJ. The Supreme Court requested briefs on the issue and subsequently modified its opinion to address the error, but the court denied a rehearing and declined to alter its decision.

References

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Duke Law Students, Professor Assist Guantanamo Defense Team: Law students will research and write briefs and help craft strategy for the military lawyers defending Guantanamo Bay detainees
'' Duke University'', November 11, 2005. # Caryn Tamber, Patriot Acts, Daily Record, July 22, 2007. # Caryn Tamber, Patriot Acts, Daily Record, July 22, 2007. #
Legal Row Erupts Over New Abu Ghraib Photos
''

antiwar.com Antiwar.com is a website that describes itself as devoted to non-interventionism and as opposing imperialism and war. It is a project of the Randolph Bourne Institute. The website states that it is "fighting the next information war”. History ...

'', July 26, 2005.
Article 67, UCMJ
#
'Blawgs' directory, Am. Bar Ass'n ''Journal''
#
Blogger Points Out Substantial Error in Supreme Court Decision, Am. Bar Ass'n ''Journal''
July 2, 2008. #

June 25, 2008. #
Kennedy v. Louisiana statement re denial of rehearing, 129 S.Ct. 1 (2008)
October 1, 2008. #

External links

CAAFlog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sullivan, Dwight H. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American lawyers United States Marine Corps reservists United States Marine Corps colonels United States Air Force civilians American Civil Liberties Union people American military lawyers