finding that district courts should abstain, as a matter of comity, from habeas or other collateral review of decisions by the military court system where review within the military court system itself would be sufficient to grant the relief the petitioner requests
How later courts described this case
- finding that district courts should abstain, as a matter of comity, from habeas or other collateral review of decisions by the military court system where review within the military court system itself would be sufficient to grant the relief the petitioner requests
- holding that, just because there was 10 subject matter jurisdiction, it did not mean “that the District Court properly could reach the 11 merits” because “there remain[ed] the question of equitable jurisdiction”
- explaining a federal court will not normally entertain a habeas pe- tition by a military prisoner unless all available military remedies 3In Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc), this Court adopted as binding precedent all decisions of the former Fifth Cir- cuit handed down prior to close of business on September 30, 1981. USCA11 Case: 20-10427 Date Filed: 12/10/2021 Page: 6 of 8 6 Opinion of the Court 20-10427 have been exhausted
- stating that the legislative history of Article 76, *134 UCMJ shows that Article III court collateral review was expected to be “the sole exception to the finality of actions within the military court system”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the judgment because I believe that Art. 76 of the UCMJ applies only to postjudgment attacks upon the proceedings of courts-martial and that the District Court should have dismissed the complaint on the basis of Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971).