United States Second Circuit

District court judgment granting plaintiff's petition for a writ of habeas corpus in a case involving an application for discharge as a conscientious objector is affirmed where: 1) in the event that Department of the Army Conscientious Objector Review Board does not provide an adequate statement of the reasons for its denial of a conscientious objector application, a district court must remand to the Army for a statement of reasons unless such remand would be utterly futile; and 2) the record contains no basis in fact to support the denial of plaintiff's application for discharge as a conscientious objector and thus remand to the DACORB for an adequate statement of reasons would be futile.

Appellate Information

• Decided 06/25/2009
• Published 06/25/2009

Judges

Court

• United States Second Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• Raymond J. Toney, New York, NY, for Petitioner-Appellee Timothy D. Watson., Joshua Waldman, Attorney, Appellate Staff, Civil Division, Department of Justice, Washington, DC (Anthony J. Steinmeyer, Attorney, Benton J. Campbell, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Gregory G. Katsas, Acting Assistant Attorney General, of counsel), for Respondent-Appellant., Arthur Eisenberg, Palyn Hung, and Deborah Karpatkin, New York, NY, and J.E. McNeil and Daniel O'Connor, Washington, DC, for the Center on Conscience & War and the New York Civil Liberties Union as amici curiae in support of Petitioner-Appellee.