Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
Not a lawyer, but I think military personnel in military custody tend to stay in military custody, so in almost none of those cases are they going to be transferred to civilian agencies unless they first receive a discharge (either a criminal one through a Special or General court martial or an administrative or medical discharge).
|
For someone with an enlistment that was originally supposed to run 2-year active duty, 6 year reserve, when would a discharge come in effect if they committed a crime in the second year of their active duty and were found unfit to stand trial?
Assuming that the US Army wanted the criminally insane soldier to have minimal contact with outside visitors and none at all with media, would it be more effective to discharge her or maintain her status as enlisted while she was institutionalised?
And for another soldier who enlisted in December 1997 and committed a crime in July 2011, when is he likely to be discharged? He was convicted subsequent to the crime, probably took at least nine months, maybe a year for the court martial to run its course. After that, he was incarcerated in Fort Leavenworth for a long time.*
Edit: Apparently, 30 years. A similar crime seven years ago actually received a sentence of 65 years for unpremeditated murder, but confinement exceeding 30 years was disapproved by the convening authority. That's pretty much a direct precedent, so 30 years imprisonment it is.
Does he remain an enlisted member of the US Army, albeit E-1 (referred to as Inmate no. [insert no.] without pay or benefits, for the entire duration of his sentence? Irrespective of when his enlistment would ordinarily run out?
Assume that his initial enlistment was MOS 11x with Option 20 for Airborne and RIP for four years active duty. I don't know when the option comes up to re-enlist, if you have to do it when entering SFQC or when you finish it or whenever, but I expect that he re-enlisted sometime between 1999-2001, with the odds being that he did it soon after February 2000, if anyone was asking about it by then (at that time he had 21 months left of his initial enlistment contract).
*What would a motiveless killing of a civilian unknown to the perpetrator be likely to get him? Took place in the US, not on a military base, victim was a middle-aged white male. There might have been reason to believe that PTSD or another psychological issue contributed to the act, with the apparently earnest claim being made in defence that the soldier 'saw' the victim preparing to drive his truck into a crowd (which no one else saw, even people much closer to the victim), but the guilty soldier refused to plead insanity or diminished capacity.
Edit: And much good it would have done him, too. PTSD is general considered irrelevant to the issue of mental capacity to military sanity boards and even schizophrenia with severe delusions and hallucinations is not considered enough to impact that finding. Reading the case law, I'm finding it difficult to imagine what would constitute insanity to a military court.