Thanks to Megan Rose over at ProPublica, I have another reference in a long list of justifications to my position that the Navy justice and IG system is not fit for purpose. It does not serve justice for victims, the accused, or the Navy. It is hidebound, slow, and often serves its own purpose.
It is long overdue for a root and branch reconstruction.
Though separate from the civilian justice system, it still is a system of and for service to our republic. Regardless of accepted poor standards, at its foundation, what should an accused expect?
Simple, it is in our Constitution; the Sixth Amendment.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, …
What in ProPublica is worthy of adding to the reference list? Simple.
Justice and the trust between the Navy and its Sailors.
The subject: CDR Bryce Benson, USN and the 886 days since the fateful collision of the USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62).
As a reference point, that is 64.8% of the time it took us to fight the Second World War.
With minimal commentary, I just want to pull a few quotes out of the article that tells the very personal story of the CO of the Fitzgerald … and the very real impact of an inconsistent, sloppy, and unreliable system of justice that everyone serves under.
During heated hearings earlier that year, then-Arizona Sen. John McCain had warned Richardson and the secretary of the Navy. “We will identify shortcomings, fix them and hold people accountable,” he said, as family members of some of the fallen sailors looked on.
Afterward, Navy leaders had decided the “close temporal proximity” of the two crashes meant they needed to reassess “whether all appropriate accountability actions have been taken,” Adm. Bill Moran, the second-in-command at the time, wrote in an order assigning an admiral to the task.
Benson, who’d thought his punishment had been levied, would now face harsher scrutiny because another captain on another ship crashed two months after him.
2018.
How would you like to be judged with this headwind?
Sanchez’s wife, perhaps the only other person who could truly grasp what Alex was going through, messaged that she couldn’t shake the feeling that their husbands were the sacrificial lambs for the Pentagon.
“I feel the same way,” Alex wrote back. “This is so much bigger than our husbands.”
…and yet, who is being protected by this sacrifice? Who will benefit? What greater good is gained by dragging this on, and on, and on?
Over the years, I have made the unexpected friendship of some who have found themselves in the Kafkaesque Navy legal and IG system. To a person, they all eventually share the greatest hurt they have received … it was from those who they thought were their friends.
The Navy community Benson and his wife had devoted their entire adult lives to had largely abandoned them long before the court-martial. Capt. Joe Carrigan, who’d been the skipper of the USS Antietam when it ran aground six months before the Fitzgerald crash, had called to prepare him: “You know, your membership to the club is revoked.”
Someone you know who you call a friend in legal or ethical – innocent, not or unknown? Have you reached out, more than once?
Not only had the Navy dumped him, it seemed determined to bring its full weight publicly against him. Almost any time Benson heard the Navy’s top officers talk about the collision, they framed it as preventable if not for his incompetence and said he “owned” the tragedy. He was frustrated by their megaphone and how he had to wait until the court-martial to tell his own story.
Benson was heartened somewhat when in December the judge called out Navy leadership for their PR campaign. The trial would be allowed to go forward, but the judge admonished Richardson and his deputy, Moran, for violating a sacred tenet of military criminal justice: to not poison the system by making their opinions clear. By doing so, any potential jurors would know exactly what the top brass wanted.
A month later in January, the judge handed the Navy a final blow: The admiral in charge of the criminal proceedings was disqualified for improperly using his position to help the prosecution gather evidence against Benson.
The Navy’s case had collapsed, but more than three months dragged by before it finally dropped the remaining charges against Benson. (The day the charges were dropped, ProPublica had informed the Navy it would be publishing a story detailing the extensive, troubling mistakes made by the Navy’s leadership in Benson’s case.)
The next day, the Navy took one more swipe at Benson, this time with a public letter of censure. The secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, wrote an admonishment that repeatedly used the same words and phrases, such as “failure” and “unworthy of trust,” basically restating the charges the Navy was unable to bring to court, without an avenue for appeal. In an email, Spencer’s spokeswoman declined to provide details about why he wrote the letter.
Alex Benson felt like the ordeal was finally over, but when she looked at her husband, she saw someone with a still-open wound.
He’d lost his chance to affirmatively, publicly, be found innocent, because the Navy, Benson told her, “screwed it up.”
How does anyone find a place to securely anchor themselves mentally in such a circumstance? Especially someone who every day thinks of his lost Sailors?
How do the families of these dead Sailors wait and wait and wait for the Navy to finally complete their accountability?
This does not happen in a vacuum. People can see and make judgement accordingly.
More than two years after the crash, Benson realizes he has become an infamous part of naval history, a cautionary tale.
A technician at a recent medical appointment casually mentioned that her son, an officer in the Navy, was unsure he wanted command because of what the Navy did to that poor guy hanging out of the side of a ship in Japan.
Benson told her she was talking about him. “It was like an out-of-body experience,” he said.
His treatment by the Navy has also jogged something loose among his fellow commanders. One officer said in an interview that he’d decided that he’d opt to retire before commanding a ship again.
“We all realize we’re completely going at this alone,” another officer said, “and are expendable in the eyes of those who only crave rank authority and shirk responsibility.”
Commanders still talk about how Richardson was publicly saying safety first while privately urging commanders to be more daring and take more risks. One skipper boldly asked Richardson at a luncheon how his position squared with prosecuting commanding officers “when something goes wrong.” Richardson, said some in attendance, sidestepped the question.
Sullivan, captain of the USS Whidbey Island, said all captains accept that they are responsible for what happens aboard their ships — even if they are asleep. But, she said, it “was very shocking” to see Navy leadership decide to hold the commanders criminally accountable. “I’m willing to sacrifice my life; that’s my job. But it’s hard to do that when you don’t think the organization has your back.”
In all, Sullivan said, “The herd is spooked.”
As discussed in other articles over the last two years – the events in WESTPAC in 2017 had many fathers and mothers outside the Commanding Officers. Standards, expectations, habits, and priorities were years in the making, well before those higher ranking officers were fired.
Accountability for those people? No.
That is also part of the problem. That is clear for all to see.
If you want a less cynical Navy, stop feeding that demon.
On Oct. 28, after seven more weeks of limbo, the Navy reversed course and decided not to take Benson to the misconduct hearing.
But, with now-numbing predictability, the Navy swiftly followed up with a letter warning Benson that it might not be over. “You are advised this determination does not in any way preclude or limit … future administrative or other proceedings.” The head of Navy personnel could ask the secretary of the Navy to decide whether Benson should be allowed to retire with his rank, the letter said. Henderson said he’d never seen anything like it with this set of facts.
Then, a week after ProPublica sent the Navy a list of questions about its actions in Benson’s case, the Navy made a final decision: Benson would be allowed to medically retire at his current rank of commander.
For the first time in almost two and a half years, he had an end date. On Dec. 29, he’ll be a civilian again.
And here we all stand in the Navy family; in 64.8% of the time to fight WWII.
We should all feel dirty and should keep a note in our back pocket; the Navy’s JAG and IG commissariat remain the same.
Last month, the VCNO – who also has a cameo in the ProPublica article from a previous position – hinted that we may see some movement;
Tasked with probing potential problems plaguing the way the sea service recruits, trains and retains a competent and ethical corps of uniformed attorneys, the 40th vice chief of naval operations on Friday telegraphed looming reforms.
Speaking at the annual Military Reporters and Editors conference at Navy League headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Adm. Robert Burke said that his comprehensive review of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps has reached its “final phases” and legal experts culled from the U.S. Department of Justice, federal courts, private sector law firms and the other armed forces have made important recommendations to guide changes.
“We have some solid recommendations,” Burke said. “The report is not final, so it’s not prudent for me to talk about it. But these are solid and tangible things that we can change about the JAG community in the Navy — and, similarly, for the Marine Corps, who will benefit from these findings, as well — and do those things a little bit differently.”
Burke said those recommendations likely will influence “how we train, how we acculturate, how we organize” the Navy’s legal ranks.
It does beg the question: how many worldwars will it take from the delivery of the report to real, structural change?
Hat tip MJ.
