United States v. Stanley (1987) saw the Supreme Court rule that a military serviceman could not file a tort claim against the government despite his being secretly administered LSD as part of the MK-ULTRA program because his injuries had been determined by a lower court to be service-related. Back in 1958, Army Sgt. James Stanley, who was stationed at Fort Knox, volunteered for a chemical warfare test program in which he was given LSD to test its effects on human subjects. Stanley insisted he was unaware they were administering him the drug. He claimed the LSD dosage had adverse cognitive effects on him that caused him to be discharged as medically unfit for the service and his wife to divorce him. He filed suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act.The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Stanley could assert his claims under the FTCA and refused to dismiss his Bivens claims. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and in a majority opinion written by Justice Scalia held that the 11th Circuit Court lacked authority to dismiss FTCA claims. They also ruled that there was no Bivens claim for Stanley's injuries as the lower court ruled that they occurred during his Army service. The majority argued that "a test for liability that depends on the extent to which particular suits would call into question military discipline and decision making would itself require judicial inquiry into, and hence intrusion upon, military matters." In dissent, Justice William Brennan argued that the need to preserve military discipline should not protect the government from liability and punishment for serious violations of constitutional rights.
Brennan wrote that the Nuremberg trials had "deeply impressed on the world" the legal and moral evils of medical experimentation on human subjects, yet only a little over a decade later the US military conducted its own tests of chemicals and biological materials. Justice O'Connor filed a separate dissent in which she argued essentially the same thing, and that the victims deserved compensation.In 1994, Congress passed a private claims bill to redress the case and two years later an arbitration panel awarded James Stanley $400,577 in reparations.
>>18283692the bad old days before Congress banned the CIA from activities on US soil. one of those things the left and civil libertarians were united on.
