Court Martial

An Aberdeen Proving Ground sergeant who was named in the Army's headline-grabbing sexual misconduct investigation last fall may be able to avoid a court-martial.Army prosecutors and the command at Aberdeen are considering scrapping the scheduled court-martial of Sgt. Nathanael C. Beach, 32, in favor of a less-serious disciplinary forum, Army officials said.Beach, a Gulf War veteran, was one of the first three soldiers charged in the sex scandal that broke at the U.S. Ordnance Center and School in November and led to charges at Army posts around the nation.

WASHINGTON - The three admirals on the Navy's court of inquiry into the collision between an American submarine and a Japanese vessel near Honolulu have unanimously recommended that the submarine's skipper not be tried by a court-martial, senior Pentagon officials said yesterday. Instead, the skipper, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, is likely to face some lesser form of punishment, such as a punitive letter or reprimand that would effectively end his career and could reduce his retirement benefits but would not threaten him with a jail sentence, the officials said.

Life should be sweet for Toni Moreland.She is weeks away from delivering her first child and is back home in Illinois with the family she loves.But Moreland, 21, the only woman to face court-martial on charges related to the sexual misconduct at Aberdeen Proving Ground, has not broken free of the year-old scandal. She says she cannot shake grim memories of her military life, the pressure to cry rape and the burden of knowing she lied about having sex with a man she barely knows.Now she's out of the Army, and out of a job."

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - The court-martial of an airman accused of attempted espionage was delayed yesterday by what a defense attorney said was interference from the Justice Department and by a last-minute memorandum from a top defense official. The Air Force said the delay was caused by efforts to coordinate between agencies. "There's been no improper manipulation" by the Justice Department, and the Air Force still has final authority in deciding charges in a military court-martial, said Air Force Col. John Kellogg, deputy staff judge advocate for Travis.

The soldier believed to have committed suicide at Aberdeen Proving Ground -- days before facing a court-martial on rape charges -- gave no indication he was a suicide risk, Army officials and his lawyer said yesterday.Pvt. Alan M. May, 22, of Round Rock, Texas, was found dead Saturday morning by his roommate in a barracks reserved for trainees at the Army Ordnance Center and School. May had been scheduled for a court-martial today on allegations he raped a fellow trainee."I am devastated by this news," May's lawyer, Capt.

FORT KNOX, Ky. - An Army investigating officer recommended yesterday that Sgt. Asan Akbar, a Los Angeles soldier accused of a grenade and rifle attack on his superior officers in Kuwait, stand trial at a general court-martial. Lt. Col. Patrick Reinert ruled swiftly after the close of a weeklong preliminary hearing that the March 23 ambush was "a surprise attack executed by stealth." During the hearing, Army prosecutors and defense lawyers argued about whether Akbar deliberately planned the attack or whether he was being falsely accused because of his deeply held Islamic religious beliefs.

Chanting "Free Bradley Manning" and wielding signs that read "my hero" and "Americans have the right to know," hundreds of demonstrators descended on Fort Meade on Saturday to support the soldier now facing a court-martial in the largest security breach in U.S. history. Manning, an Army private who lived in Maryland before enlisting, has acknowledged leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including diplomatic cables, Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and gunsight video footage of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad, to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Army officials announced yesterday that they would convene the first court-martial in what could be a string of public military trials in the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, 24, is scheduled for court-martial May 19 in Baghdad. He is one of seven reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company based near Cumberland who are charged in the scandal. Sivits, of Hyndman, Pa., 12 miles north of Cumberland, faces charges that include conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for failing to protect detainees from abuse, and maltreatment of detainees.

The military justice system has never exactly enjoyed a great public image. In films from Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory set in World War I, to the Australian Boer War masterpiece Breaker Morant, to the World War II drama The Caine Mutiny, the system has usually been portrayed as a tool of injustice, cynically used to protect the powerful by tormenting the powerless. As the saying goes, "Military justice is to justice as military music is to music." Groucho Marx is credited with that though it might be best known as the title of a 1974 muckraking book by Robert Sherrill, yet another indictment of this mixture of military hierarchy and the judicial process.

Less than a week after the Naval Academy dropped criminal charges against a senior accused of raping a female midshipman, an academy official said yesterday that the college intends to court-martial him in the next week or so on other misconduct charges. The academy superintendent, Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, is troubled that few of the school's sexual assault cases have gone to trial and feels that pursuing other charges against the midshipman will send a message to students that sexual misconduct has serious consequences, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.