Opinion ID: 2452
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Army's Denial of Watson's Conscientious Objector Claim

Text: Watson filed for conscientious objector status in 2006, the same year his deferment was to expire. The application was reviewed pursuant to a series of Army procedures, which included (1) Watson's preliminary interview by an Army chaplain, who expressed reservations as to Watson's sincerity; (2) a non-adversarial hearing before an investigating officer, Colonel Clinton R. O'Neill III, who heard Watson testify, found him sincere, and recommended that he be classified as a conscientious objector; (3) sequential record review by four army officers, each of whom recommended that Watson be denied conscientious objector classification; [7] and (4) further record review by a three-member panel of the Department of the Army Conscientious Objector Review Board (DACORB), the final Army decisionmaker, which on December 5, 2006, denied Watson's application for conscientious objector classification by a vote of two to one.