Due process be damned, examples will be made.
A military court has upbraided a Marine two-star general at Camp Pendleton for unlawfully meddling in a court-martial case against a non-commissioned officer accused of abusing his troops.
In a ruling issued last week overturning the court-martial conviction of Sgt. Jaime Ortiz of 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals in Washington, D.C., found that Maj. Gen. Eric M. Smith went too far in his crackdown against hazing throughout 1st Marine Division by committing unlawful command influence.
Called the “mortal enemy of military justice,” unlawful command influence occurs when senior leaders coerce parties in a court-martial case, jeopardize the appellate process or undermine the morale, respect and public confidence in the armed forces by appearing to pressure others to tip the scales of justice.
Prosecutors had alleged that Ortiz conspired with fellow noncommissioned officers to haze five junior Marines by forcing them to get special haircuts and pressing their metal rank insignia into their chests. Marines also were ordered to perform unauthorized physical punishment and Ortiz was accused of punching two of them in the chest, according to court filings.[…]
Smith wrote that he was “huddling up” with his division leadership “to determine how to tamp this brush fire down before it takes off into a full fledged forest fire. That said, each of these events allegedly happened in our battalion areas. That tells me we are not providing the supervision required and those who would haze have no fear of reprisal or being caught. That stops today.”
Even if Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents were still probing the allegations, Smith urged his commanders to never wait and instead take action.
“(T)he Marine Corps owns the barracks, not a few salty (lance corporals) who probably can’t fight their way out of a wet paper sack. We’re the (1st Marine Division), victors at Guadalcanal, and we’re reduced to dealing with jackassery from a few (lance corporals) who think they are in charge. That will be proven wrong ASAP,” he wrote.[…]
Writing for the appellate tribunal, Judge Col. K. Scott Woodard said that some things Smith did during his anti-hazing crackdown were lawful, like expressing disdain for abuse and noting its cancerous effects on operational readiness, good order and discipline within the Corps.
But Woodard also pointed to everything else Smith did to compromise the case: So irked by the alleged abusers, Smith sought to show them who was the boss, even if investigators had not finished their probes. He transformed their alleged misconduct into personal rebukes of him, the commandant and Marines who had recently died on duty. He threatened to shut down all training in the division in order to address hazing.
“And most troubling, he let everyone know that he was personally offended by those who were accused of hazing, because they had ‘just . . . flipped (him) the bird’ and he was headed their way to show them how unwise that decision and action was within his command,” Woodard wrote.