A senior enlisted Marine at Camp Pendleton was sentenced today to a reduction in rank and 60 days confinement after a court martial found him guilty of removing classified documents from files and possessing an unauthorized machine gun. [More]May I ask why the sentences for Wayne Fincher and David Olofson were so much more severe?
And will anyone from LASD be prosecuted for receiving stolen classified documents?
[Via Tom Z]
Only a $597 fine? Sheesh that's almost worth acquiring some illegal toy, and when you get caught with it just whip out the checkbook. Better than 10 years in the slammer-
ReplyDeleteDepends on the unit and who finds out about it. Had an E6 in my platoon get caught smuggling AK parts back to the US on redeployment a few years back and he didn't even lose rank. He went to headquarters for a while with no responsibility, and ended up with a squad again by next deployment. Swept right under the rug. That was WITH the involvement of CID, so...
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, once you make E5 you're pretty safe short of really heinous shit, unless you get caught by civvie cops. E4 or below, hell, don't put a toe out of line or you will get hit with the full force of UCMJ.
At least the guy got a court martial. In all the f-ed up situations I personally saw, only one guy got tried, and then only because he was caught with drugs ten+ times. He did a little time in county when he got caught off base with drugs, but nothing worse than that.
Oftentimes the leadership of a unit doesn't want the incident to stain their reputations, so they do what they can to make it go away. After all, it's hard to get a star when 5% (exaggeration) of your brigade fails the piss tests.
Just one of the many reasons I wouldn't have stayed in the Army if they paid me a million bucks a year. F that.
Keep in mind, just because he is prosecuted and punished under UCMJ doesn't mean he can't be tried in civilian courts as well if any of these infractions occurred while he was not on active duty or not on a military installation.
ReplyDeleteIf that happens is up to the LA prosecutor, not the military. Since he leaked the material to the LAPD it is doubtful this will happen.
He didn't receive harsher punishment because he didnt deserve it. He has nothing to do with leaking the classified information to LASD. That had already been proven. He wasn't prosecuted for that. The classified info that he did have that he was prosecuted for was from i different tour in Iraq. He didn't know it was still on his thumb drive and it was proven that the thumb drive hadn't even been accessed since he'd gotten home. And the machine gun... it wasn't the full weapon. It was the lower receiver brought home from I believe his 3rd tour in Iraq. There was no paperwork filed on it because the officer that issued it to him didn't have any paperwork on it. In truth, none of this should have come about anyway if the gov't hadn't searched his home and family for 17 months trying to find info linking him to the case with LASD even though they had already proven several times that he had nothing to do with it. I don't know about the Fincher and Olofson cases but what I do know is that Master Sgt. Pagan did not deserve to go through this. He didn't deserve a day in the brig let alone 60 days. He's served on the Marine Corps for over 20 years, served 3 tours in Iraq, served the Hayward Police Department for 10 years, and has been a devoted husband and father of 6 kids. This is not how we should be treating our hero.
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