Antoinette Quinn O’Neill, Esq.

04/20/2023

Shoot me an email if you find yourself facing an Officer Grade Determination- it’s stressful, don’t handle this alone

[email protected]

03/22/2023

Parlatore Law Group is a cloud-based law firm providing comprehensive legal services.

11/15/2022

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=579424807517036&id=100063485655773&mibextid=uevf24

Parlatore Law Group is a cloud-based law firm providing comprehensive legal services.

11/11/2022

Fellow Veterans, I hope you have the opportunity to take a moment (or many) today to relax and enjoy your friends and family.

11/04/2022

☺️

10/26/2022

Jury Nullification.

There is so much to discuss about the *Wisconsin murder trial of Darrell Brooks - his pro se defense, the zen-like ability of Judge Dorow to tolerate his rants, his removal from the courtroom, the mute button, the ruling that he cannot testify - but today's proceedings were jury instructions and closing arguments and I was enthralled by how the defendant and the judge went back and forth so many times on his insistence to inform the jury about jury nullification. She came awfully close to refusing to allow him to give a closing argument after he repeatedly said he was going to tell the jury they had the power to nullify.

I have so many thoughts about this case but at the top of my mind is jury nullification. This certainly isn't the case for it, but jury nullification is a fascinating part of our justice system, allowing the jury to have the final word, to allow morals to outweigh laws. To give the people the final word.

I certainly consume my fair share of true crime media - the fact that youtube is often airing large portions of ongoing trials live for me to watch. I saw a link to this trial yesterday and now I am hooked.

The jury is out now, I expect them to be back quickly despite the 76 charges they must decide on. But I've been wrong before.

This is the trial of the driver of the vehicle who ran through a Christmas Parade last year, killing 6 and injuring dozens more. Link of one of the youtube clips I watched in the comments if you want to fall down this rabbit hole with me.

*edited to correct to Wisconsin, not sure how I messed that up, I even looked up something related to Wisconsin law when I was watching the footage and I had a question

04/28/2022

What is the one thing that people have in common if they are able to be convicted by a non-unanimous jury?

They wear a uniform to work and have offered to risk their lives for their country.

Every state requires a unanimous verdict now. The military does not.

One judge ruled, in one court-martial, that the 2020 US Supreme Court case requiring a unanimous verdict did not leave an out for the military. The Army is appealing that decision. We haven't heard from the Army Court of Criminal Appeals yet.

More to come. This Stars and Stripes article lays it out well:
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-01-13/judges-ruling-in-officers-sex-assault-case-likely-overturned-4277967.html

I wrote an article before this Army case, I'll link it in the comments.

An Army judge’s novel ruling to require a unanimous guilty verdict in an upcoming court-martial has drawn an array of characterizations by military law experts: totally wrong, partially right, rogue and brave among them.

03/22/2022

Give this a listen to learn a little more about the military court-martial process! Thanks to Ferah Ozbeck for having me on her fantastic podcast!

Antoinette (Toni) O'Neill is a retired Air Force JAG who is a Partner at Parlatore Law Group, a cloud based national law firm.  She focuses her practice on the representation of military members facing adverse actions.  Toni has had enormous success in military courtrooms across all the br...

01/26/2022

This article has the military making some broad claims about how cases will be handled and by whom. Sexual harassment is already against the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) as a violation of orders each branch has in place prohibiting the behavior. I'm guessing this means they will add it as its own punitive article (it's own #). The claim of punishing or prosecuting these outside the chain of command is unlikely unless huge changes are made to procedure. There have been many rumblings about taking justice out of the hands of commanders but I haven't seen that enacted yet.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the order Wednesday afternoon.

12/23/2021

Merry Christmas to All!

Happy Holidays! 🎼 On the twelfth day of Christmas, my law firm gave to me..... 🎶

10/05/2021

I like podcasts, I listen to so many. I was listening to " How I Built This" tonight and the host, Guy Raz, asked his guest Gary Vaynerchuk "what were you chasing in your 20s"

https://listen.stitcher.com/yvap/?af_dp=stitcher://episode/85819941&af_web_dp=https://www.stitcher.com/episode/85819941&deep_link_value=stitcher://episode/85819941

I thought about what I was chasing back then. I think I was chasing "the win."

In my childhood and teens I was an althlete and loved competing in sports. In my 20s all I did sports wise was a little intramurals and later, squadron after work sports. That wasn't enough for me because it was for fun, not for winning. So I turned to poker. Then, after a poker fueled few years of law school in Las Vegas I found the place I really like to win in- the courtroom.

What were you chasing in your 20s?

Growing up in New Jersey in the 1980's and 90's, Gary Vaynerchuk honed his business skills trading baseball cards and selling wine at his dad's liquor store. He discovered the potential of Youtube early on and launched Wine Library TV, an unfiltered, in-your-face wine review series that boosted the....

10/01/2021

Nicole Gaither, did you see this? I think I remember you posting about this battle when it began.

UPDATED with more details: Just days after the first court hearing in Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow profits mega-bite lawsuit on Disney was pushed back to March 2022, the Oscar nominee and…