Court Opinion

ID: 9836865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 03:15:16.526684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:19.100935
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part):
I agree with the majority that this court cannot affirm appellant’s bad-conduct discharge where there is such an incomplete record. In the instant case, the record of trial is missing:
a. the charge sheet;
b. the court-martial convening order;
c. the Staff Judge Advocate’s recommendation (SJAR); and
d. three defense exhibits used in sentencing.
However, I do not agree with the majority’s giving appellant the windfall of permanently setting aside the bad-conduct discharge on the unsupported and vague basis of judicial economy. 53 MJ at 28. This unauthorized sentence relief is not fair to the Government and to the countless servicemen and women of the past who have been punished with a bad-conduct discharge for deserting their military units and duties or by going absent without leave. Why should this appellant be singled out to receive such generosity by the majority?
The crime of desertion and the crime of absence without leave (AWOL) have been recognized as serious crimes in the military for centuries because these crimes harm morale and sap the strength of the military. In the U.S. Civil War on the Union side it was observed:
In 1863, actual desertions ran at more than forty-five hundred a month. In March alone, six hundred cases went to court-martial; throughout that year they averaged more than three hundred per month, and rose to nearly four hundred per month in 1864, as the actual monthly desertion rate peaked at seventy-three hundred. By January 1863, General Halleck estimated that almost 290,000 soldiers were absent from one cause or another, at least seventy-five thousand of them deserters. When caught and brought to trial, they accounted for exactly one-third of all courts-martial.
William C. Davis, Lincoln’s Men 178 (The Free Press 1999).
In the present case, appellant left his unit at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, without permission and was caught in Missouri 7 months later by civilian police officers.
Appellant pled guilty at his trial and, inter alia, received a bad-conduct discharge. As discussed above, the majority and, I agree that it would not be lawful to affirm that bad-conduct discharge in view of the deficiencies in the record of the sentencing-clemency portion of his trial. But, in my view, it is equally not fair to simply void the bad-conduct discharge under the theory of judicial economy.
Black’s Law Dictionary 851 (7th ed.1999) defines judicial economy as follows:
Judicial economy. Efficiency in the operation of the courts and the judicial system; esp., the efficient management of litigation so as to minimize duplication of effort and to avoid wasting the judiciary’s time and resources. • A court can enter a variety of orders based on judicial economy. For instance, a court may consolidate two cases for trial to save the court and the parties from having two trials, or it may order a separate trial on certain issues if doing so would provide the opportunity to avoid a later trial that would be more complex and time-consuming.
*29Where is the duplication of effort saved here? How would the judiciary’s time and effort be wasted by a remand by this Court to the convening-authority level where appellant can receive an opportunity to go through the missing portion of his case again. In my view, a remand under our case law is appropriate here, e.g., see United States v. Mark, 47 MJ 99 (1997). On remand, a new SJAR can also be prepared and appellant can have another chance to seek clemency with a new convening authority. That process would make sense and be fair in this case. Accordingly, I vote to reverse the court below on sentence and to remand this case to a new convening authority for a new sentencing hearing and full clemency process starting with preparation and service of a new SJAR on appellant. Fiat justitia et pereat mundus.