2012
2012-11-16-WP-Rebecca-Sinclair-when-the-strains-of-war-lead-to-infidelity
When the strains of war lead to infidelity
[Article also available
here.]
By Rebecca Sinclair
Washington Post Op-Ed, 2012-11-16
Rebecca Sinclair is married to Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair,
a former deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan,
who is being tried at Fort Bragg, N.C., on charges
including adultery and sexual misconduct.
[1]
Like most Americans, I’ve been unable to escape the current news cycle
regarding several high-ranking military generals entangled in sex scandals.
Unlike most Americans, however, for me the topic is personal.
My husband, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, is one of the officers.
[2]
Spectators will try to make this scandal about many things:
the arrogance of powerful men;
conniving mistresses;
the silent epidemic of sexual assault in the armed services.
But these explanations obscure an underlying problem:
the devastating influence of an open-ended war —
now in its 11th year —
on the families of U.S. service members.
[3]
Let me first address the elephant in the room.
My husband had an affair.
He violated our marriage vows and hurt me tremendously.
Jeff and I are working on our marriage, but that’s our business.
[4]
Jeff also needs to answer to the Army.
That is his business, not mine, and he accepts that.
I believe in and support him as much as ever.
[5]
I wish I could say that my husband was the only officer or soldier
who has been unfaithful.
Since 2001, the stress of war has led many service members
to engage in tremendously self-destructive behavior.
The officer corps is plagued by leaders abandoning their families
and forging new beginnings with other men and women.
And many wives know about their husbands’ infidelity but stay silent.
[6]
For military wives, the options are bad and worse.
Stay with an unfaithful husband and keep your family intact;
or lose your husband, your family and the financial security
that comes with a military salary, pension, health care and housing.
Because we move so often, spouses lose years of career advancement.
Some of us spend every other year as single parents.
We are vulnerable emotionally and financially.
Many stay silent out of necessity, not natural passivity.
[7]
In many ways, ours is a typical military story.
Jeff and I married 27 years ago.
While he rose through the officer corps,
I earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees
and taught at community colleges in the places where we were stationed.
We later had children.
[8]
Since 2001, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have destabilized our life.
We have moved six times in 11 years.
On average, our kids change schools every two years.
Between five deployments, site surveys and training operations,
Jeff has spent more than six of the past 10 years away from his family.
[9]
None of this is meant to excuse infidelity.
I expected more of Jeff, and I think he expected more of himself.
But we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t recognize the larger reality.
My friends who are married to other combat leaders
have been my anchor during this crisis.
We understand that our soldiers may come home disfigured or injured
in such a way that we will become lifelong caregivers.
We also understand that they may not come home at all,
and if blessed with a reunion,
they may carry emotional baggage few could understand.
My friends know that it could have been their heartbreak as much as mine.
This is the only time in U.S. history
that our nation has fought a decade-long war with a volunteer Army.
Doing so has consequences.
Nothing good can come of families being chronically separated
for a decade or more.
[10]
Jeff’s case has its own complications.
He was involved with a woman who confessed to a superior officer.
As a servicewoman, she stood to be charged with criminal conduct
under the military code of justice.
She alleged sexual assault, and no such allegation should ever go unanswered.
We are confident that the charges will be dropped.
Hundreds of text messages and journal entries came to light in pretrial hearings last week
that establish the affair was consensual.
The woman in question admitted under oath
that she never intended to have Jeff charged,
and Jeff has passed a polygraph test.
Ironically, if Jeff had decided to leave his family he would be in the clear.
[11]
There are many accusations against Jeff,
some of which have already fallen apart.
Jeff has been charged with possessing alcohol in a combat zone;
a visiting dignitary gave him a bottle of Scotch
that remained unopened on a bookshelf.
His personal computer was used to access pornography;
time stamps and Army records show that he was out of the country or city
when most of the files were downloaded.
We expect those charges, too, to be dismissed.
[12]
But the damage has been done.
It will take years for Jeff to shed the false image of a hard-drinking, porn-dependent aggressor.
The other generals will also struggle to rehabilitate
reputations they spent decades building.
All of these men are human beings, with strengths and fallibilities,
and they have families who are under real strain.
How we address this strain will say much about what kind of country we are;
it will also determine how stable and strong our military is.
Andrea Mitchell MSNBC video of an interview with Mrs. Jeffrey Sinclair
2013
2013-07-19-NYT-Jeffrey-Sinclair-in-generals-court-martial-selection-begins-for-a-jury-of-high-ranking-peers
In General’s Court-Martial, Selection Begins for a Jury of High-Ranking Peers
By ALAN BLINDER
New York Times, 2013-07-19
FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Two dozen United States Army generals converged here this week from their posts around the world, not for high-level discussions on the future of warfare, but to be considered as jurors in the court-martial of one of their peers.
The defendant, whose trial is scheduled for September, is Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, who was a deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division when the Army began investigating him amid allegations of sexual misconduct in 2012.
The charges stem from General Sinclair’s once-secret romance with a captain that prosecutors say became criminally violent. General Sinclair, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is now facing eight charges, including sodomy and adultery.
General Sinclair’s decision to go before a jury will culminate in a rare proceeding for the Army: a court-martial for a general, who, like any other soldier, will be judged by peers who are more senior. That means every court member — the Army’s term for jurors — should be at least a one-star general appointed before December 2010, when General Sinclair’s promotion was confirmed, though there are rare exceptions to the mandate.
“Years and years go by without ever seeing a general officer being court-martialed,” said Thomas J. Romig, a former Army judge advocate general and dean of Washburn University School of Law. “It could even be decades.”
One general’s court-martial, which included Maj. Gen. Douglas MacArthur as a juror, became the subject of a movie — “The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell,” about an early advocate of air power who was convicted of insubordination in 1925 for public remarks critical of the United States’ military preparedness.
The process of picking a panel began long before the officers arrived, when Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, who is head of the Army’s Forces Command and who convened the proceedings, selected 26 generals to serve as potential jurors, including a group of alternates. Lt. Col. William Helixon, who is leading the prosecution, said that there are only 230 generals throughout the Army who are eligible for the assignment.
This week, 24 of those officers crowded into a courtroom for questioning about their fitness for jury service, answering pointed queries about their willingness to judge General Sinclair as they would a corporal and whether family members had been victims of sexual assault.
Despite General Allyn’s efforts to pick a suitable pool, the challenge of empaneling a jury from the tight-knit community of leaders quickly became apparent.
On the first day of the selection proceedings, Col. James L. Pohl, the judge in the case, asked how many of the officers were acquainted with General Sinclair. Five raised their hands.
“We moved in the same circles when we were younger officers,” Maj. Gen. Michael X. Garrett said later. “Professionally, I’ve known him for my whole career.”
More pervasive conflicts emerged when every prospective juror acknowledged ties to at least one potential witness.
Many also said they held generals to greater standards than lower-ranking soldiers.
“We’re expected to properly represent our service,” said Lt. Gen. Mark S. Bowman, a member of the Joint Staff who has been in the Army for 35 years. “Whenever we do something, it is pretty public.”
Richard D. Rosen, a former Army lawyer who now directs the Center for Military Law and Policy at the Texas Tech School of Law, predicted that the generals would be able to set aside their personal opinions. “They really will deliberate,” said Mr. Rosen, who added that he never encountered a general as a juror when he was a military lawyer. “You’re going to get a very mature panel in terms of experience, age and everything else, and they’re going to be quite independent in their deliberations.”
With the military under pressure from Capitol Hill
to reduce the number of sexual assaults in its ranks,
Congressional debates — and their possible consequences for the generals —
also seeped into the courtroom.
Because the Senate must approve high-level military promotions,
lawyers repeatedly asked the officers whether they feared that
serving on the jury could adversely affect their opportunities for advancement,
especially if the panel acquits General Sinclair.
Although all the generals pledged to return an appropriate verdict
without regard for their career prospects,
one who has clashed with senators, Maj. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo III,
worried openly that his participation
could further strain the Army’s image with policy makers.
“I worry about the baggage I bring,” said General Cucolo,
who was sharply criticized for personnel policies he implemented while leading troops in Iraq.
“Since my judgment is being questioned by those outside the Army in influential locations,
perhaps my name should not be associated with this case.”
Colonel Pohl ultimately dismissed the first batch of 12 prospective jurors,
and on Thursday, lawyers began working through the alternates.
The jury, which must have at least five members, could eventually include
senior officers from other branches of the armed services.
2013-08-15-WP-Courtmartial-of-BG-Jeffrey-Sinclair
Sordid details spill out in rare court-martial of a general on sex charges
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post, 2013-08-15
2013-12-19-Army-Times-Trial-Army-general-facing-sex-charges-delayed
Trial for Army general facing sex charges delayed after accuser finds phone
by Joe Gould
Army Times, 2013-12-19
2013-12-20-Fayetteville-Observer-cellphone-discovery
Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair court-martial on sexual assault charges postponed
by Paul Woolverton
Fayetteville Observer, 2013-12-20
2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/us/lead-prosecutors-abrupt-departure-rattles-military-sexual-assault-case.html
Lead Prosecutor’s Abrupt Departure Rattles Military Sexual Assault Case
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 2014-02-15
The military’s most closely watched sexual misconduct prosecution has been thrown into turmoil after the Army’s lead prosecutor abruptly left the case this week, less than a month before the scheduled court-martial of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair on sexual assault charges.
The departure of the prosecutor, Lt. Col. William Helixon, came just days after defense lawyers said in interviews that the colonel told them that he had come to think that a jury would not believe the testimony of the prosecution’s chief witness, a 34-year-old captain.
...
Maj. Crystal Boring, a spokeswoman at Fort Bragg, N.C., said in an email that Colonel Helixon voluntarily left the case for “personal reasons.” The general was a commander with the 82nd Airborne Division before being placed on limited duty because of the criminal investigation.
For several days, The New York Times had been putting questions to Army officials at Fort Bragg and the Pentagon about what defense lawyers described as Colonel Helixon’s misgivings about the case and his efforts to persuade superiors to drop the most serious charges. According to the defense, Colonel Helixon also disclosed that he believed the captain had not told the truth during testimony at a pretrial hearing.
It was impossible to confirm the defense team’s description of conversations with Colonel Helixon, who did not respond this week to emails or to messages left on his wife’s cellphone. Army officials at the Pentagon declined to comment.
Major Boring declined to discuss other aspects of the case or whether the military would seek to delay the court-martial, scheduled for early March. She said prosecutors would “continue to pursue resolution of these charges,” and asserted that personnel changes were common in lengthy cases.
But if it turns out the prosecutor’s departure stemmed from disagreement about how the case should be handled, that would be “highly unusual,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.
“It’s possible the prosecutor was removed,” Mr. Fidell said, assuming the account of Colonel Helixon’s concerns was accurate. “But more likely, he was extremely uncomfortable with the way things were unfolding and felt an obligation to remove himself from the case because he may have felt he would be put in an untenable position from a professional responsibility standpoint.”
The defense has raised sharp questions about testimony at a hearing last month, when the accuser said under oath that she had found an old cellphone on Dec. 9, the day after she had finished a three-day series of meetings with prosecutors.
A defense expert testified that forensic analysis suggested the captain had actually charged and restarted the phone several weeks earlier. The defense lawyers assert that the phone contains further evidence of the affair — evidence they contend bolsters their argument that all sexual relations between General Sinclair and the captain were consensual.
General Sinclair, who is married with children, has offered to plead guilty to conduct unbecoming of an officer and to adultery, which is punishable under military law, his lawyers say. But they have pressed hard in negotiations against his serving prison time.
...
Richard L. Scheff, the lead defense lawyer, said Colonel Helixon told him he had expressed concerns about the accuser to a superior at the Pentagon, but was told to move forward to trial on the same charges.
Mr. Scheff, a former federal prosecutor who is now chairman of the Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads law firm in Philadelphia, said, “We greatly respect” Colonel Helixon, adding that the defense lawyers might try to call him to testify about what they contend has been unlawful command influence on the prosecution. He said pressure to demonstrate that the military was getting tough on sexual assault had prejudiced the case.
“If the Army is changing its view of this case, we welcome it,” he said in an emailed statement. “If not, we remain disappointed that politics, rather than fairness and justice, is driving the decision making.”
2014-02-25-WTVD-Sinclair-tequests-all-charges-be-dismissed
Fort Bragg Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair asks sex charges be dismissed
by WTVD-TV, 2014-02-25
...
Military officials said last week that lead prosecutor Lt. Col. William Helixon had left Sinclair's case "for personal reasons."
But in the motion filed by Sinclair's defense Friday, Helixon is quoted telling a superior that he has doubts about the credibility of Sinclair's accuser.
It says on February 8, 2014, Helixon shared with lead defense attorney Richard Scheff that "he believed (the accuser) had lied, and that charges that relied solely on (the accuser) should be dismissed."
The introduction to the motion describes how Helixon felt ethically bound to remove himself from the case after concluding there was reasonable doubt as to Sinclair's guilt on the sexual misconduct charges. It goes on to say he was ignored or rejected by the Staff Judge Advocate and Convening Authority, and concludes that "the decision-makers in this case fear the adverse personal and political consequences of taking the ethically, morally and just action of dismissing the charges that rely on the Government's discredited primary accuser." It ends by saying the case should be dismissed as a result of "unlawful command influence."
The motion also claims that Helixon has disclosed that General Ray Odierno, the Army's top commander, is "aware that the charges relying on the captain's testimony are likely to fail."
During a February 9 phone conversation between Helixon and Scheff, the motion says Helixon "acknowledged Sinclair was not guilty of sexual misconduct charges, nor did he deserve to be dismissed from the Army, go to jail or register as a sex offender." It says Helixon believed that "politics and outside pressures were driving forces pushing the case forward," telling Scheff that former 18th Airborne Corps SJA, Brigadier General Paul Wilson, would be "in charge" of the prosecution.
Wilson is currently a Washington, D.C.-based Assistant JAG for Military and Operational Law. The motion goes on to say that Wilson told Helixon he "knew the accuser was a liar, that she had lied since the beginning, and that she'd repeatedly lied directly to Helixon."
Wilson, Helixon, current 18th Airborne Commander Lt. General Joseph Anderson, public affairs staff and many other are requested to testify in a hearing, according to the motion.
...
2014-03-03-Stripes-system-also-on-trial-at-brig-gen-jeff-sinclair-s-court-martial
System also on trial at Brig. Gen. Jeff Sinclair's court-martial
By Paul Woolverton, The Fayetteville Observer, N.C.
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-03
2014-03-08-NYT-Day-1-general-sinclair-sex-assault-court-martial
As General’s Sex Assault Trial Opens, Accuser Says She Was Bullied
By ALAN BLINDER
New York Times, 2014-03-08
...
Although defense lawyers had always disputed her account of the sexual assault, they raised new questions about the captain’s truthfulness after a January pretrial hearing in which her testimony about an iPhone she used to communicate with General Sinclair contrasted with a forensic analysis.
In a reflection of that strategy, General Sinclair on Thursday pleaded guilty to lesser charges, of misconduct, including possession of pornography and adultery, that together carry up to 15 years in prison and dismissal from the military. The defense now hopes to focus the trial on the credibility of the captain, without the potentially damaging evidence from other charges coloring the jury’s views.
Last month, the lead prosecutor on the case quit after acknowledging to his superiors that he also felt that the captain had been untruthful in the January hearing, and that he thought the most serious charges against General Sinclair should be dropped. But Army officials have said that the former prosecutor, Lt. Col. William Helixon, was under extraordinary stress from health and personal issues when he voiced those misgivings, and that he remained convinced that the captain’s account of sexual assault was true.
General Sinclair, one of the highest-ranking soldiers to face court-martial in decades, joined the Army in 1985 and eventually served as the deputy commander of both the 82nd Airborne Division and of American forces in southern Afghanistan. He was widely considered a rising star in the Army before the sexual assault allegation emerged; during a 2012 court hearing, the captain said, “Everybody in the brigade spoke about General Sinclair as if he was a god.”
But in his opening statement, the lead prosecutor, Lt. Col. Robert C. Stelle,
portrayed General Sinclair as a sexual predator.
“This is a case where nonconsensual sex was used as an instrument of control,”
Colonel Stelle told the jury, describing what he called
“an extensive pattern of misconduct.”
...
During Thursday’s court session,
General Sinclair described his misconduct under questioning from the judge,
Col. James L. Pohl.
Confident, even relaxed, while occasionally looking to his lawyers for assistance,
General Sinclair detailed his flirtations with other women,
including a failed attempt to persuade a first lieutenant to join him for a date.
By the general’s account,
the inappropriate nature of the relationships often centered on
his requests for nude photographs.
“We exchanged sexually explicit email traffic and photographs,”
General Sinclair said as he described his relationship with an Army major.
But the general also said that subordinates made sexual advances toward him.
“She’d send me a note that’d say, ‘I’d really like to sleep with you,’ ”
the general said of one lower-ranking officer.
He also described the initial phases of his relationship with the captain.
“When did you think she wanted to have sex with you that night?”
Colonel Pohl asked about one encounter between the general and the captain.
“Probably when she took her top off,”
the general answered,
asserting that he rebuffed her in that instance.
...
2014-03-06-Stripes-Day-0-brig-gen-jeffrey-sinclair-admits-guilt-on-3-counts-denies-sex-assault
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair admits guilt on 3 counts; denies sex assault
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-06
...
[General Sinclair] told the judge his accuser, the captain,
approached him in March 2009 with an offer to watch a Showtime movie
in his personal trailer at a base in southern Afghanistan.
He said the movie contained "some nudity."
The captain, Sinclair said, "wanted intercourse that night."
He said he immediately decided, "I wouldn't go there."
The judge asked how Sinclair knew the captain wanted to have sex.
"Probably when she took her top off, sir," the general replied.
The two had sex in Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, Texas, Arizona and North Carolina, Sinclair testified.
They exchanged hundreds of sexually tinged emails and texts,
some of which have been described in pretrial hearings.
...
2014-03-07-Stripes-Day-1-brig-gen-jeffrey-sinclair-trial-accuser-says-he-threatened-to-kill-her
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair trial: Accuser says he threatened to kill her
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-07
2014-03-08-Stripes-Day-1-general-s-tearful-accuser-describes-forced-oral-sex-violence
General's tearful accuser describes forced oral sex, violence
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-08
...
Defense lawyer Ellen C. Brotman told jurors that
the accuser sent emails to the general on the very day in March 2012
that she finally decided to tell Sinclair’s superior officer
that they'd had an affair and Sinclair had assaulted her.
Brotman said the captain’s version of events
is undermined by her own journal entries,
and by reams of texts and email exchanges with Sinclair.
The captain "never did anything she didn’t want to
during the three years the relationship lasted,"
Brotman said.
"Her own words will speak this truth."
Referring to the captain’s journal entries, Brotman told jurors:
"What you will not hear is one iota of a fear for her career,
her safety or her family’s safety."
Instead, she said, the accuser feared the general would not divorce his wife
after promising her that he would.
Brotman read aloud from the captain’s journal:
"My biggest fear is that there is still something there in his marriage."
The defense contends that the captain made the sexual assault allegations
to retaliate against Sinclair for pursuing another woman.
Just hours before she revealed the affair,
Brotman said,
the captain discovered chatty "I love u" emails
between Sinclair and another female captain
while reviewing Sinclair’s emails as part of her job in Kandahar.
That caused the captain to "explode into fury," Brotman said.
Using the general’s email account,
the accuser fired off three angry emails to the other captain,
whom she did not know.
In one email, she told the woman that she wasn’t the only one
having sex with the general.
"Her dreams are crashing down around her,
and she can’t keep it inside any more," Brotman said.
Even so, Brotman said, the accuser emailed Sinclair the same day
to thank him for picking up a gun holster while on leave in the U.S.:
"Thank you, sir. You are GREATLY missed here."
Two days earlier, she emailed the general: "I owe you."
The word "owe" was code between the two for "love," according to Brotman.
Earlier in their relationship, Brotman said,
the accuser referred to sex with Sinclair as "deployment sex,"
implying that it would end when the deployment was over.
And, according to Brotman, the accuser threatened to commit suicide
only "as a ruse to get Brig. Gen. Sinclair’s attention."
"False suicide claims, false sexual assault claims," Brotman said.
...
2014-03-09-Stripes-sinclair-s-sex-assault-accuser-was-ambitious-soldier-too
Sinclair's sex assault accuser was ambitious soldier too
By Jeffrey Collins and Michael Biesecker, The Associated Press
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-09
...
Her credibility is central to the case.
Is she a woman whose affair with a charismatic and approachable superior
ended with him forcing her to perform oral sex
and threatening to kill her and her family?
Or is she, as Sinclair's lawyers have portrayed,
a jilted lover who fabricated allegations of sexual assault
when Sinclair refused to leave his wife?
She testified Friday as Sinclair's court-martial began.
She is expected to return to the stand Monday,
where Sinclair's attorneys will likely ask tough, pointed questions
and dissect the relationship in extremely graphic detail.
...
Sinclair spoke highly of her to other soldiers
and many of them also felt she was intelligent and hard-working.
But they also thought she could be volatile
and did not properly defer to her superiors.
"She didn't understand her place in the world.
And then, just other -
for instance bothered me that when going out on a combat patrol,
I could smell her perfume from across a hundred meters away,
which was not necessarily something I want as I'm walking down some Iraqi street,"
testified Capt. Christopher Rosser,
who worked with Sinclair and his accuser in Iraq and called Sinclair a mentor.
...
2014-03-10-NYT-emails-show-shared-concern-of-false-testimony-in-army-sexual-assault-case
Emails Show Shared Concern of False Testimony in Army Sexual Assault Case
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 2014-03-10 (published in the Monday 2014-03-10
Times)
2014-03-10-Stripes-Day-2-judge-rules-army-command-interfered-in-sinclair-sex-assault-case
Judge rules Army command interfered in Sinclair sex assault case
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-10
FORT BRAGG, N.C. —
A military judge ruled Monday that
the U.S. Army improperly interfered
with a decision to reject an offer by Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair
to plead guilty to lesser charges in his sexual assault case.
The judge, Col. James C. Pohl, ruled that
Army officials exerted "unlawful command influence’’
when a three-star general turned down Sinclair’s offer before the trial.
He gave defense attorneys the option of
renewing Sinclair's original plea offer or a different plea offer;
in any case, the judge said,
the case must be overseen by a new command authority.
Evidence of command decisions in the case did not come to light
until after Sinclair’s accuser, a fellow Army officer,
testified Friday that Sinclair sexually assaulted her
and threatened to kill her and her family
if she disclosed their three-year sexual affair.
Defense attorneys learned of the new evidence over the weekend,
when Army lawyers turned over emails from Army lawyers and the three-star general.
"We're in a rather unusual place," the judge said Monday.
The defense has contended that the Army trumped up charges against Sinclair
in response to intense political pressure to show that
it is cracking down on sexual abuse.
Sinclair was charged at a time of heightened political and public concern
about a surge of sexual violence in the military.
Pohl last week dismissed an earlier defense motion
to drop all charges because of unlawful command influence.
But that was before the incriminating emails were aired in court Monday morning.
The emails appear to show that
there was concern among Army officials about the accuser’s truthfulness —
in addition to similar concerns cited by the lead prosecutor
before he quit the case last month
after failing to persuade the Army to drop the most serious charges against Sinclair.
Sinclair, 51, the former deputy commander of U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan,
pleaded guilty Thursday to
adultery, inappropriate relationships with two other female officers;
attempting an inappropriate relationship with a third;
impeding an investigation,
and viewing pornography while on duty.
That was a tactical move by the defense
to avoid salacious accounts of philandering and pornography,
and to focus instead on attacking the accuser’s credibility.
Sinclair remains charged with
sexual assault, sodomy, groping the captain against her will,
"open and notorious’’ sex,
and abusing his government credit card in pursuit of trysts with the captain.
His original plea offer presumed that
some of the more serious charges would be dismissed.
In court Monday, Pohl discussed with defense and Army lawyers how to proceed
in light of the fact that a jury panel of five male two-star generals
has already heard testimony by the accuser —
and that Sinclair’s guilty plea last week occurred only after
his earlier offer to plead guilty and see dismissal of some of the more serious charges
had been rejected.
Sinclair’s lead defense lawyer, Richard Scheff, told the judge,
"This panel has been tainted. This process has been tainted.’’
He added:
"The remedy has to be dismissal of those [sexual] assault charges.’’
The lead Army prosecutor, Lt. Col. Robert Stelle,
suggested having a new "command authority’’ —
a senior commander who decides whether to proceed with charges —
consider whether to consider Sinclair’s original plea offer or a new, revised offer.
The judge agreed that a new command authority would be required,
but asked why he should give the Army more time with the case
after prosecutors were late in turning over crucial evidence.
The judge made it clear he was troubled by testimony earlier Monday morning by Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson.
The "convening authority" who decides whether to pursue charges
was questioned by the judge by phone from Afghanistan.
The three-star general’s testimony conflicted with
an email he wrote in December,
when Anderson said he had decided to reject an offer by Sinclair
to plead guilty to lesser charges.
At issue is a letter sent to Anderson
by the special victim’s advocate for Sinclair’s accuser,
a 34-year-old Army captain.
In the letter,
the advocate wrote that accepting Sinclair’s offer
"would have an adverse affect on my client
and the Army’s fight against sexual assault.’’
In a Dec. 20 email, Anderson wrote: "I have read the letter and made my decision’’
to reject Sinclair’s plea offer.
But in testimony Monday, speaking by phone from the Swedish embassy in Kabul,
Anderson said he did not recall reading the letter.
"I saw it but did not read it word for word,’’ Anderson testified.
He said he wasn’t interested in the advocate’s position
but wanted instead to know what the accuser thought.
When he learned that the accuser strongly objected to the plea, Anderson said,
he decided to reject it.
Stelle suggested to the judge that
Anderson’s Dec. 20 email referred to a cover letter
on a package of legal documents sent to Anderson by the defense team.
But in a Dec. 18 email,
Anderson’s military legal advisor strongly suggested that
he showed the advocate’s letter to Anderson —
and that it made it "an easy decision’’ to turn down Sinclair’s plea.
Anderson did not formally reject Sinclair’s plea until Jan. 16
but refused to accept Scheff’s offer to meet and discuss the plea.
Scheff said Anderson decided to reject the plea
after reading the letter from the victim’s advocate.
The defense contends that Anderson’s email,
coupled with emails from top Army lawyers
expressing doubts about the accuser’s truthfulness,
constitute "unlawful command influence,’’ or political interference.
The judge in his ruling said
"the record supports he [Anderson] did see" the letter
and used it in deciding to reject the plea.
He said Anderson's explanation "does not seem to make any sense."
Pohl made it clear he was annoyed by
the prosecution's late production of the crucial emails.
"Do we have to wait two months in the middle of the trial
before we get these?’’
Pohl asked, his voice rising.
"When does it end?’’ the judge asked the lead government prosecutor.
"You dribble discovery to the defense....
We have hearing after hearing ... and then a little more comes out.’’
Scheff told the judge that
he had been deceived and "stonewalled’’
by prosecutors regarding the emails.
When asking for emails in pre-trial discovery, Scheff said,
prosecutors accused him of going on "a fishing expedition.’’
"Every time, we catch fish,’’ he said,
referring to the emails received over the weekend,
and other emails provided earlier.
Scheff described unlawful command influence and political interference as
"a cloud hanging over this case.’’
"How can anyone have confidence in this process?’’
he asked the judge, who did not contradict him.
The accuser previously testified during a preliminary hearing Jan. 7
about a cellphone she said she found while unpacking boxes on Dec. 9,
long after evidence in the case was supposed to be turned over.
Forensic analysis indicated that the woman lied about
when she found the phone and what she did with it.
The phone contains messages to and from Sinclair.
"It is possible that she was not truthful,’’
Col. Michael Lacey, a senior military lawyer at Ft. Bragg,
wrote in an email to Anderson on Jan. 8,
the day after the accuser testified.
Lacey wrote of the accuser:
"The forensic analysis of the phone indicates
she accessed the phone before 9 December,
which brings her credibility into question.’’
Anderson’s testimony was important because the email from Lacey told him that
the accuser appeared to have lied on the stand.
2014-03-12-provisional-NYT-general-sinclair-sex-abuse-court-martial
Plea Deal Talks Resume After Setback in Prosecution of General
By ALAN BLINDER and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 2014-03-12
...
Colonel Pohl’s decision to halt the trial
stemmed from a letter written in December
by a lawyer for the main witness against General Sinclair,
a captain who has accused him of forcing her to have sex and threatening her life.
The letter said the captain was opposed to a plea deal,
and it invoked the potential political consequences of an agreement
on the Army’s efforts to combat sexual assault.
Colonel Pohl said he believed
the letter might have unduly influenced Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson,
the commanding general of Fort Bragg’s XVIII Airborne Corps.
“Allowing the accused to characterize this relationship as a consensual affair
would only strengthen the arguments of those individuals that believe
the prosecution of sexual assault should be taken away from the Army,”
the accuser’s counsel, Capt. Cassie L. Fowler, wrote.
General Anderson, who testified by phone from Afghanistan on Monday,
denied that the threat of political fallout
had factored into his thinking about the case,
but Colonel Pohl ruled that the appearance of “unlawful command influence”
required action.
Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School,
said he was struck by General Anderson saying
he had essentially ceded decision making over the plea deal to the accuser.
“What I found more troubling than anything else
was the convening authority
giving the keys to the car
to the victim,”
Mr. Fidell said.
Mr. Fidell said that the judge’s order allowing General Sinclair
to make a new plea offer to an Army commander outside of Fort Bragg
could “give the Army potentially a graceful way out.”
...
Captain Fowler, the special victim counsel for the general’s chief accuser,
said in a statement that the ruling was the result of
“misdirection” by the defense.
“It’s nothing more than attempt to take the focus off
the general’s gross misconduct,” she said.
2014-03-11-Stripes-general-s-sex-charge-trial-halted-as-plea-negotiations-ensue
General's sex charge trial halted as plea negotiations ensue
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-11
2014-03-12-AP-mens-rights-activists-embrace-complex-rape-case-against-brigadier-general-jeffrey-sinclair
Men's Rights Activists Embrace the Complex Rape Case Against Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair
by Allie Jones
The Wire, 2014-03-12
2014-03-13-NYT-how-a-military-sexual-assault-case-foundered
How a Military Sexual Assault Case Foundered
By ALAN BLINDER and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 2014-03-13
FORT BRAGG, N.C. —
The most important sexual assault prosecution in the military came apart on Monday.
But cracks had appeared two months earlier in the same North Carolina military courtroom.
During a Jan. 7 pretrial hearing,
the sole witness to accuse Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair of forced sex —
charges that could imprison him for life —
took the stand at Fort Bragg
to explain how she had only recently found an old iPhone
that contained evidence of their three-year affair.
What might have seemed an innocuous discovery
was, to General Sinclair’s civilian lawyers, a major opportunity:
The witness, a 34-year-old captain,
had kept text and other communications with General Sinclair
on her computer and on another cellphone,
some of which bolstered their contention
that the relationship was consensual.
They suspected this newly discovered phone contained similar messages.
As the lead defense lawyer, Richard L. Scheff, a former federal prosecutor,
questioned the captain,
she told a precise, detailed and unequivocal story about
when and where she found the phone, and what she did with it.
But according to a forensic expert hired by the defense, her story was not true —
the phone had been charged and restarted two weeks earlier than she had claimed.
The military’s own experts reached a similar conclusion later.
After the hearing, Mr. Scheff said,
he drew close to the chief military prosecutor, Lt. Col. William Helixon, and said,
“You realize that you have a problem, right?”
Colonel Helixon, Mr. Scheff said, agreed.
And so, apparently, did his superiors.
At 7:32 the following morning, Col. Michael O. Lacey,
the top military lawyer at Fort Bragg,
sent an email to Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson,
commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps,
that said,
“It is possible that she was not truthful.”
General Anderson rejected
General Sinclair’s offer to plead guilty to some lesser charges
soon after that email.
But doubts among the prosecutors about the captain’s credibility had been sown.
And as the debate inside the command spilled into public view,
the judge overseeing the court-martial, Col. James L. Pohl, took note.
This week, Colonel Pohl stopped the court-martial, sent the jury home and offered General Sinclair another chance to try to hammer out a plea agreement, presumably on lesser charges.
The military, in its pursuit of General Sinclair,
seemed overly concerned about politics and its public image,
he suggested.
The breakdown of the prosecution’s case was unquestionably a black eye for the Army
at a time when it has been trying to fend off criticism on Capitol Hill
that it is unable to clamp down on sexual assault,
which statistics show has risen steadily in recent years.
General Sinclair’s court-martial took on special significance because
he is possibly the first general to face sexual assault charges
,
and because his accuser was herself a promising junior officer.
But a review of the past three months suggests that the prosecution had doubts about
whether a jury would believe the witness, an intelligence officer and Arab linguist
who had worked with General Sinclair in both Iraq and Afghanistan,
even before the January pretrial hearing.
Though she told a compelling story of being bullied into sex,
threatened and even physically abused by General Sinclair,
the details of her story had shifted on some points,
and, the defense said,
she had claimed sexual assault
only after it appeared she faced legal problems herself.
...
...
General Sinclair, 51,
was the deputy American commander in southern Afghanistan
when the accusations first emerged two years ago.
Until that moment, he was one of the Army’s rising stars.
In 1998, Stanley A. McChrystal, then commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment,
rated him
“one of the most talented majors in the Army.”
In 2005, Maj. Gen. John Batiste called him
the top battalion commander in his division
and
the best of 57 lieutenant colonels he was responsible for rating.
But those fitness reports missed a problem that seemed to worsen
even as General Sinclair’s bosses saw his promotion to division commander and beyond as a foregone conclusion:
He liked to exchange emails of a sexual nature with female junior officers.
And more:
Last week, General Sinclair pleaded guilty to charges including
adultery, requesting explicit photographs from female Army officers,
possessing pornography in a combat theater
and seeking a date with a lieutenant.
And yet, those charges would pale compared with what his former lover, the captain, had claimed:
that he forced her to perform oral sex on him
and said he would kill her and her family if she revealed their tryst.
A Midwestern beauty queen and four-sport high school athlete,
the captain quit a liberal arts college in Arkansas
a few credits shy of a communications degree
to enlist in the Army in 2002,
explaining that the Sept. 11 attacks
“extremely impacted my life as it did many other people.”
According to her testimony,
she was assigned to be a
cryptologic linguist [
cf.],
learned Arabic at the military’s prestigious Defense Language Institute
in Monterey, Calif.,
and was sent to a facility affiliated with the National Security Agency
at Fort Gordon, Ga.
By 2007 she had graduated from Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga.,
and after training as an intelligence officer,
was sent to Iraq, where she advised American officers about
Iraqi politicians, military and tribal leaders.
Her brigade commander was Jeffrey A. Sinclair, then a colonel.
“I was just amazed by him in every way,” she would later testify.
By 2009, according to both sides, they had begun an affair
that would span deployments in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq.
But over many months,
she grew disillusioned and depressed by the affair, she testified later,
fearing that he was using her for sex.
The relationship also became frightening:
After the captain suggested meeting his wife, she said,
General Sinclair became angry and threatened to kill her
if she ever revealed their affair.
With the relationship becoming increasingly stormy,
General Sinclair one day walked into her office in Afghanistan,
unbuttoned his pants, grabbed her by the neck and forced her to fellate him,
she testified.
“I know I didn’t pull away from him,” she testified,
“but I didn’t want to do it.”
On the stand at Fort Bragg last week,
she sobbed as she as she accused General Sinclair of abuse.
When a prosecutor, Lt. Col. Robert C. Stelle, asked her to identify the general,
she scarcely looked in his direction as she pointed toward the defense table.
The defense has painted a different picture of the captain,
who has received immunity in exchange for her testimony.
Citing the woman’s testimony, diary entries and text messages,
General Sinclair’s lawyers say she was jealous that
the general would not seek a divorce from his wife.
Worse, they say, she never mentioned sexual assault
until after it was clear that she could face charges of adultery,
which often is illegal in the military.
Among other things,
they point to 2012 testimony from Chief Warrant Officer Jose Serbia,
who said the accuser disclosed the affair to him earlier that year.
Chief Serbia testified that he asked her,
“Were you raped?” and she replied, “No.”
Text messages and journal entries
suggest the affair was loving, passionate and consensual,
the defense asserts.
One of her diary entries read,
“My biggest fear is that there is still something there in his marriage.”
In another entry, the captain wrote,
“I’m so in love with him and the idea of always being with him
that I forget about large factors that would prevent that.”
...
On Monday, General Anderson, testifying from Afghanistan,
said that he had not thoroughly read the Fowler letter.
But he said he decided to reject the plea based on the accuser’s opposition,
saying he wanted her to have her day in court.
...
2014-03-13-Slate-Marcotte-gen_jeffrey_a_sinclair_sexual_assault_case_would_it_really_be_handled_differently
The Sexual Assault Case Against Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair Would Be Just as Messy in Civilian Court
By Amanda Marcotte
Slate XX Blog, 2014-03-13
...
The prosecution contends that the two incidents of forced oral sex,
which are alleged to have happened in Afghanistan,
were part of an abusive and controlling pattern of behavior
from Sinclair toward the accuser.
...
The fact that she appears in her phone messages and diary entries
to be a woman besotted
says nothing.
It's fairly common for domestic violence victims to be in love with their abusers
and to make excuses for abuse, even abuse as serious as sexual assault.
2014-03-16-Army-Times-Sinclair-s-deal-drops-sex-assault-charge
Defense: Sinclair's deal drops sex assault charge
By Michael Biesecker, The Associated Press
Army Times, 2014-03-16
2014-03-18-Stripes-army-general-pleads-guilty-in-sex-case-says-i-failed-her-as-leader
Army general pleads guilty in sex case, says 'I failed her' as leader
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-18
FT. BRAGG, N.C. —
Two former lovers faced off a few paces apart in a military courtroom Monday,
avoiding eye contact as a judge heard conflicting narratives
about a tumultuous and illicit affair
between two officers of very different rank and stature.
Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair,
wearing jump boots and a dress blue uniform with a white star on each shoulder,
pleaded guilty to mistreating his mistress,
a subordinate officer under his command.
He told a military judge in a halting voice that
he deceived the woman, a captain,
during their three-year affair,
causing her "emotional harm and suffering."
"I failed her as a leader and a mentor,
and caused harm to her emotional state,"
Sinclair said, struggling to maintain his composure
while reading from a statement on a dreary, rainy day in which
he pleaded guilty to a series of related charges.
"I led her to believe that I would leave my wife
and that we would be together at some point in the future,"
he said. "This was not true."
The captain, who was not present for Sinclair's statements,
testified at the start of the general's sentencing hearing Monday.
Also wearing a dress blue uniform,
she told of lasting trauma she suffered
at the hands of a general whom she once worshiped,
but who she said
ensnared her in an unequal and manipulative relationship
that he controlled as her senior commander.
He would not let her break off a rocky affair
that caused her anguish, she said.
"I felt completely trapped,"
the 34-year-old captain testified, choking back tears.
"I was just being used for sex."
Pressed by Sinclair's lawyer to admit
that she voluntarily remained in the relationship,
the captain shot back,
"I would have left a long time ago
if it was completely up to me."
The predicament left the captain so distraught and fearful
that she slept on her couch with a loaded gun nearby
and got a 95-pound Doberman to protect her,
her mother said in Monday's testimony.
The back-to-back accounts offered by the tall, imposing general
and the small, dark-eyed captain
nudged the high-profile sexual misconduct case another step toward resolution.
The military judge, Col. James L. Pohl,
on Monday accepted Sinclair's guilty pleas,
which were hammered out over the weekend with an eye toward
closing a case that destroyed the general's career
and left his former lover saying she felt abused and utterly alone.
As part of that plea deal,
the Army agreed to drop charges that
he sexually assaulted the captain,
threatened to kill her and her family,
and engaged in "open and notorious" sex
in a parked car and on a hotel balcony.
Under those charges, Sinclair would have faced life in prison
and would have had to register as a sex offender had he been found guilty.
One of only a handful of generals to face a court-martial in the last 60 years,
the 51-year-old Sinclair also pleaded guilty to
twice misusing his government charge card to pursue the affair,
disobeying an order not to contact the captain,
and making derogatory comments about other female officers.
On March 6, the 27-year veteran pleaded guilty to
adultery;
impeding an investigation
by deleting sexually explicit emails to and from a civilian woman;
possessing pornography in a war zone;
conducting inappropriate relationships with two other female officers;
and improperly asking a female lieutenant for a date.
...
On Monday,
the general said his behavior was unbecoming to an officer and gentleman.
It was
"unjustified and unnecessary
and caused [the captain] mental harm and suffering,"
he said.
Asked by the judge
whether his comments about female officers were inappropriate and indecent,
Sinclair nodded briskly.
"Oh, yes, sir," he said. "I was wrong."
He also admitted that
the real reason for taking trips to Arizona and Texas at government expense
"was for me and [the captain] to see each other."
The general said
he misled his lover because
"I feared that if I told her the truth,
she would reveal the relationship
with terrible consequences for both of us."
He embarked on the affair in 2009, fully aware that
the much younger woman was "enamored of my rank and authority,"
Sinclair told the judge.
For the first six months, Sinclair said,
he believed the captain understood that he would not divorce his wife.
Only later did he begin to realize that
she "was emotionally committed to the relationship in a way that I wasn't,
and that she wanted me to leave my wife."
Sinclair said the captain was jealous of other women, including his wife.
He said he flirted with other women and "was cold to her at times
in order to encourage her to break off the relationship on her own."
Prosecutors put the captain and her mother on the stand
to underscore a contention that Sinclair mistreated his mistress
and took advantage of the discrepancy in their ranks to control her.
The captain, an intelligence officer and Arab linguist,
described the general as "the only person in the world
who could get me out of that situation, and he refused to."
She worked directly for Sinclair for much of their relationship.
Because of mistreatment by Sinclair, the captain said,
she is anxious and guarded now around senior commanders.
"I'm constantly wondering ...
how are they abusing their rank ...
and how might they abuse me or someone else?"
Her mother, who lives in Nebraska,
said Sinclair's behavior devastated her daughter.
"She was wound tighter than a corkscrew," she told the judge.
"She'd just sit there and cry uncontrollably."
Under brief cross-examination,
the captain acknowledged that
she was trying desperately to get Sinclair's attention
when she threatened suicide after he stopped returning her calls.
She said she knew the general probably would not divorce his wife,
yet continued to have sex with him.
Even after Sinclair allegedly forced her twice to perform oral sex
and threatened to kill her and her family —
according to the captain's previous testimony —
she sent the general a thank-you card
that gushed about his leadership and stature.
She thanked him for allowing her to work for him,
calling it "my greatest honor."
She added, "I owe you, sir" —
code between the lovers for "I love you,"
according to previous testimony.
But when asked by Sinclair's lawyer, Richard L. Scheff,
whether she had insisted that Sinclair leave his wife,
the captain denied it.
Scheff provided the court with entries from the captain's journal,
in which she wrote:
"My biggest fear is that
there is still something there in his marriage."
The captain said
Sinclair used vulgar and abusive language to disparage female officers.
When she challenged him, she testified,
he uttered a profanity and told her he was a general
and could say whatever he wanted.
"As a female,
it was extremely discouraging to hear someone at that level, at that rank,
call women by those names," she testified.
Sinclair admitted using vulgar language to describe several female officers.
But he said his comment about a general being able to do whatever he wanted
was an inside joke among his command staff, and was said in jest.
The captain, challenged by Scheff that
everyone in the military curses, including her,
responded that everyday military profanity is much different than
vulgar, sexually explicit insults directed only at women.
With a pained expression,
the captain spoke at times with her head down,
and did not look in Sinclair's direction.
The general leaned back in his chair, hands folded,
with a somber look as he listened intently.
Sentencing testimony resumes Tuesday with four more Army witnesses.
Scheff said he would call at least 20 witnesses to testify about
Sinclair's character and service to his country.
Scheff said Sinclair's wife, who has stood by him,
would submit a letter to the judge and that
Sinclair himself would make an unsworn statement at sentencing,
Scheff said.
He added that he had not decided whether to have Sinclair testify under oath.
Scheff said Sinclair became emotional when testifying.
"That's what happens when you have a sincere belief that you made a mistake," he said.
"You do get choked up."
In the most contrite element of his colloquy with the judge,
Sinclair said he should have been mentoring the young captain.
"Instead," he said,
"I created a situation that over time caused her emotional harm and suffering."
2014-03-18-NYT-sinclair-court-martial-plea-deal
Opposing Testimony Caps Trial of General
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 2014-03-18
FORT BRAGG, N.C. —
At a military courtroom here on Monday,
two former lovers, now enemies, told their stories.
Seated at the defense table in a dress blue uniform and well-shined jump boots,
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair admitted that he had wronged the woman,
now a 34-year-old Army captain and intelligence officer,
with whom he had an affair for almost three years.
“I led her to believe that I would leave my wife
and that we would be together at some point in the future.
This was not true,”
General Sinclair, 51, who is married with two children,
told the military judge.
Then, as the court-martial entered its sentencing phase, it was her turn.
Speaking haltingly and with emotion,
the captain, wearing her dress blues,
denied that she wanted the general to end his marriage.
But she felt trapped, unappreciated and despondent
as the affair was ending, she said.
As she spoke, he leaned back in his chair, hands clasped in his lap.
“I felt like I was just being used for sex,
and for his physical purposes,”
she said.
The testimony came on a day when General Sinclair
pleaded guilty to an array of charges, including
mistreating the captain,
disobeying a commander’s order not to speak to her,
using derogatory language to describe female officers,
and misusing his government charge card.
With those pleas — and others this month —
military prosecutors agreed to drop sexual assault charges
that were far more serious,
including that he twice forced the captain to perform oral sex,
threatened to kill her and her family if she revealed the relationship,
and had “open and notorious” sex with her in a parked car in Germany
and on an exposed hotel balcony in Arizona.
If convicted of those charges,
he potentially faced life in prison and permanent registration as a sex offender.
It is up to the judge, Col. James L. Pohl, to issue a sentence.
General Sinclair, who was deputy commander of American forces in southern Afghanistan when he was recalled in 2012,
has admitted to charges that carry up to 25 and a half years in prison.
Yet the actual sentence is expected to be only a fraction of that:
Defense lawyers and prosecutors agreed to a deal
that will limit his incarceration.
The actual punishment will be the lower of
whatever the judge decides or the agreed-upon cap.
The cap is strictly confidential until the judge pronounces his sentence.
The case faltered this year when military lawyers concluded that
the woman might have lied under oath in January,
about finding an old iPhone with evidence of the affair.
Her problematic testimony even led the former lead prosecutor to quit the case,
after he failed to persuade his bosses to drop the most serious charges.
But a civilian lawyer representing the woman, Jamie Barnett,
said the woman stood by her story
that General Sinclair had forced her to perform oral sex.
“The Army and the military in general must learn that
when a superior officer has authority over someone
towards whom he is making improper advances,
it is not a consensual affair,”
Mr. Barnett said in a statement.
“It is sexual abuse and a victimization of the junior person.”
In court,
as General Sinclair described the affair, and how he misled the woman,
he had to stop for a few moments to compose himself as he read through his statement.
He said he had been worried that if he told her the truth —
that he would never leave his wife —
that she would hurt his career.
“I began to fear that
she was not going to be content to end the relationship quietly,
but that her anger and disappointment
could lead to her acting rashly and exposing us,”
he said.
“From this point on, I was not honest with her about my intentions.”
He said he even
“attempted to anger her by flirting with other women
and also being cold to her at times
in order to encourage her to break off the relationship on her own.”
“I failed her as a leader and a mentor
and caused harm to her emotional state,”
he told the judge.
In the afternoon, the captain took the stand for the prosecution,
describing how she had become increasingly desperate
as the relationship broke down.
“I told him I was not designed to be in a secret relationship like that anymore,”
she said.
“I needed out.”
When she was on home leave, she said,
she feared returning to Afghanistan, where he was a high-ranking commander,
“not knowing what his plans were, what he was going to do.”
“I wanted my life to be over,” she said.
Today, two years after she disclosed the affair,
and two years after General Sinclair was sent home from Afghanistan,
she struggles to stay focused on work.
“I just am very guarded now,” she said.
“I have a very hard time trusting people,
and have a very hard time feeling safe.”
Under questioning from the lead defense lawyer, Richard L. Scheff,
she said she would have ended the relationship if she could have.
“I would have left a long time ago if it was completely up to me,”
she said.
Mr. Scheff asked,
“You never wanted him to leave his wife for you?”
“No, sir,”
the captain replied.
Mr. Scheff put into evidence
numerous text messages, journal entries and transcripts of audio recordings
from the captain showing, he said,
that she did want the general to get a divorce,
and that she was highly committed to continuing the relationship.
“My biggest fear is that
there is still something there in his marriage,”
one journal entry states.
Another one reads,
“I’m so in love with him and the idea of always being with him
that I forget about large factors that would prevent that.”
When the captain was done testifying, it was her mother’s turn
to describe her daughter’s growing anxiety and alienation
as the affair collapsed.
The mother, who flew in from Nebraska,
said when she visited her daughter at her new duty station in Arizona,
she was shocked to find that
a “95-pound vicious Doberman is always at her side.”
Her daughter, she added, was sleeping on the couch, a loaded gun nearby.
But there were problems even before the affair ended, she said.
On a cruise to the Caribbean in early 2012, the mother recalled,
her daughter at one point “blew up and went hysterical.”
Back home in Nebraska, she said, her daughter would say,
“Leave me alone, just leave me alone.”
Had she ever been like this before, asked the prosecutor, Lt. Col. Robert C. Stelle.
“Never, never, ever, ever, ever,” the mother said.
2014-03-18-NYT-Editorial-a-broken-military-justice-system
A Broken Military Justice System
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
New York Times Editorial, 2014-03-18
...
[Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York]
put it well in a February interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.
“I’m not interested in an innocent soldier going to jail
any more than I’m interested in a guilty perpetrator going free,”
she said.
“We need an objective, trained prosecutor
making these decisions about whether a case should go forward,
not politics,
not the discretion of a senior officer or a commander
who may like the perpetrator or might like the victim,
who may value the perpetrator more than the victim.”
2014-03-18-Stripes-Sinclair-Sentencing-Day-2-wife-of-brig-gen-jeffrey-sinclair-says-he-lives-with-guilt-over-affair
Wife of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair says he lives with guilt over affair
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-18
FORT BRAGG, N.C. —
The wife of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, who has supported him
from the time he was charged with sexual assault two years ago,
described her husband in a statement Tuesday as consumed by guilt and remorse
for an adulterous affair with a junior officer under his command.
The statement came as a prosecution witness testified that
suspicions of the three-year affair with an Army captain
had become so widespread that
a military skit at a roast for Sinclair in 2010
featured soldiers portraying the general and his lover
as they prepared to engage in oral sex.
Rebecca Sinclair and her husband watched the skit
along with other military wives,
who “were clearly shocked, angered and dismayed,”
Lt. Col. Ben Bigelow, who served with Sinclair,
told a military judge on the second day of Sinclair’s sentencing hearing.
In her statement, Rebecca Sinclair did not mention the skit
but described the lasting damage her husband’s infidelity had inflicted
on his family and on Sinclair himself.
“The public humiliation and vilification are nothing compared to
the private suffering and guilt he lives with every day,”
she said in a letter to the military judge who will sentence her husband
for adultery, mistreating his lover and other offenses.
She said her family had been “dragged through the mud”
by the media, Army prosecutors and “that party” —
her term for the woman with whom her husband had the affair.
She asked why “that party has been protected and permitted to lie under oath
with no consequences.”
Forensic experts testified that the captain,
who testified under a grant of immunity,
lied on the stand in January during testimony about
an old phone she said she had discovered
that contained messages to and from Sinclair.
The general’s lawyers attempted to read Rebecca Sinclair’s statement
in open court late Tuesday.
But the judge, Col. James L. Pohl,
did not allow it and said he would revisit the issue Wednesday.
Rebecca Sinclair, who said
she has stayed away from her husband’s high-profile court martial
to be home with the couple’s two sons, ages 10 and 12,
asked for a sentence that “doesn’t punish us any further.”
She referred to herself and the boys as
“the only truly innocent victims to these offenses.”
She criticized the Army
for failing to punish her husband’s former lover for adultery,
a serious offense in the military.
She said of her husband’s infidelity:
“I have to be honest —
I am on the road to forgiveness, though not fully there.”
The deeply personal statement by a wronged wife came on a day
when the Army attempted to demonstrate that
Sinclair’s behavior had compromised good order and discipline.
Suggesting that Sinclair’s actions had exposed the Army to public ridicule,
it introduced testimony about the 2010 skit,
performed in Germany in front of at least 500 people,
including officers, soldiers and German citizens.
The skit was part of “a roast for the boss” at a change-of-command party.
Sinclair and the captain began their affair in 2009.
Bigelow said a soldier in a brown wig depicted the captain,
who kneeled at the crotch of another soldier portraying Sinclair.
“She was offering to give him oral sex,” he testified,
adding that the performance drew raucous laughter
at a party where alcohol was served.
The captain did not attend.
Bigelow said he had heard rumors that Sinclair and the captain
were “too close” and possibly having sex
but that Sinclair “vehemently denied” any improper relationship.
Two years later, in March 2012,
the captain accused Sinclair of twice forcing her to perform oral sex on him.
Sexual assault and sodomy charges were dismissed Monday in a plea deal
in which Sinclair agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges.
Asked on cross-examination
whether Sinclair ordered the officer who had organized the skit
to apologize to the captain and also find out how she was doing,
Bigelow said he was not aware of that.
Sinclair, 51,
one of only a handful of generals to face court-martial in the last 60 years,
pleaded guilty Monday to mistreating the captain.
He also pleaded guilty to
twice misusing his government charge card to pursue the affair,
disobeying an order not to contact his mistress,
and making derogatory comments about other female officers.
A week earlier, Sinclair pleaded guilty to adultery,
impeding an investigation by deleting sexually explicit e-mails
to and from a civilian woman,
possessing pornography in a war zone,
conducting inappropriate relationships with two other female officers
and improperly asking a female lieutenant for a date.
Under the plea agreement hammered out over the weekend,
the Army agreed to dismiss charges that
Sinclair threatened to kill the captain and her family
if she exposed the affair
and engaged in “open and notorious” sex in a parked car and on a hotel balcony.
Sinclair would have faced life in prison and registration as a sex offender
had he been convicted of the most serious charges.
With his guilty pleas,
Sinclair would normally face up to 25 1/2 years in prison
when sentenced by Pohl at the conclusion of this hearing.
However,
an agreement between prosecutors and the defense puts a cap on his punishment.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Also Tuesday, Army prosecutors put on the stand
the lieutenant who was asked for a date by Sinclair
after he told her he was “smitten” by her.
She declined because she “just didn’t think it was right,”
she testified.
The lieutenant said publicity about the case
had damaged her career and “done me a disservice.”
The testimony was intended by prosecutors to demonstrate that
Sinclair’s behavior has harmed female service members
and that the general should be punished accordingly.
The lieutenant,
one of just a handful of women serving as a field artillery officer,
said senior male officers are now wary of her
and refuse to meet with her alone in their offices.
“I feel this case has worked against me,” she testified.
Holding back tears,
she paraphrased career advice she said Sinclair offered her in an e-mail:
“If you are female and you are successful,
it’s perceived that you are screwing someone to get to the top.”
Sinclair’s lawyers followed the Army’s witnesses
with a parade of 15 active duty or retired officers and soldiers
who praised the general’s military service and commitment to his soldiers.
Their testimony depicted him as
one of the Army’s most dynamic and inspirational commanders,
a charismatic leader respected and admired by many former colleagues
despite his guilty pleas.
The witnesses told the judge
they would proudly serve with Sinclair if given the opportunity.
They said he was fully capable of and committed to redeeming himself
and repairing the damage he had caused his wife and sons.
A retired chaplain and close friend of Sinclair said
he practiced “tough love” on the general
and urged him to take responsibility for his actions.
“I believe he took ownership of his actions —
and I didn’t let him off easily,”
the chaplain, Curtis Heydt, testified.
“Jeff wants to rebuild his relationship with his family
and to take actions to change ...
and make more of his life.”
A retired chief warrant officer, Eric Lee Jr.,
testified by phone from Chile that
Sinclair confessed to him two years ago
that he had committed adultery with the captain
and had begun to repair his marriage.
“He’s not afraid of the truth,” Lee testified.
Lt. Col. Todd Grissom said Sinclair would “go the extra mile”
to give a second chance to soldiers who had broken regulations
if they genuinely showed remorse.
Outside the courtroom, Sinclair’s lead attorney, Richard L. Scheff,
called testimony about the skit a “lowball tactic,”
saying Sinclair had nothing to do with the skit
and could not be held responsible for it.
Scheff also called the judge’s decision
not to immediately allow Rebecca Sinclair’s statement
to be read into the court record “appalling.”
He vowed to get the statement admitted Wednesday.
“It will be in,” he said.
“If there’s justice, it will be in.”
Asked why Rebecca Sinclair did not appear in court
to read the statement herself,
Scheff told a reporter:
“She is home with her kids —
and if it were you, your wife would be home with your kids as well.
“Her entire family has been dragged through the mud,
and she’s not happy about it,” he said.
In the statement, Rebecca Sinclair told the judge that
she chose to remain home with her sons:
“I am sure you understand that this is where I need to be
and ... should not be viewed as a lack of support or love for my husband.”
She added that Sinclair had been a loving and devoted father to the couple’s sons.
“Their true and open hearts have forgiven him,” she said.
Outside court, Sinclair’s lawyers and public relations team
sparred with a retired Navy rear admiral and lawyer, Jamie Barnett,
who has said that he is an unpaid legal adviser to the captain.
In a statement Monday,
Barnett said the captain stood by her claim that Sinclair had sexually assaulted her.
The statement said Sinclair “victimized” the captain
and “literally sabotaged her career by altering her orders
to keep her under his command
and refusing her many requests to be transferred.”
He said Sinclair’s behavior was
“not only illegal, it was unconscionable.”
Scheff called Barnett’s statement “utter nonsense.”
He said the captain’s own emails and journal entries showed that
she enjoyed working for Sinclair and wanted to continue.
She even lobbied to be sent to Ft. Bragg
when Sinclair was stationed there, he said.
Rather than scheming to have the captain transferred to Ft. Bragg
to be near him, Scheff said,
Sinclair listed Ft. Bragg as seventh
among the options the captain should consider for her transfer.
Asked to respond to Scheff’s comments,
Barnett said in a statement Tuesday that
Sinclair “not only disgraced his uniform,
he used his command authority in a way that
was both inappropriate and illegal.”
He added,
“It is past time to explain or parse either his behavior or judgment.”
Barnett said
no sexual relationship between a senior commander and junior officer could be consensual
because commanders wield considerable authority over those they command.
“It is sexual abuse and victimization of the junior person,” he said.
2014-03-19-Stripes-Sinclair-Sentencing-Day-3-army-gen-sinclair-breaks-down-asks-judge-to-not-punish-family
Army Gen. Sinclair breaks down, asks judge to not punish family
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-19
FORT BRAGG, N.C. —
His eyes red, his head bowed,
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair strode uneasily to a courtroom lectern Wednesday
and glanced up at a silver-haired military judge
who will sentence him for offenses he admits he committed.
Exactly two years had passed since a young Army captain who worked for Sinclair
walked into the office of his commander in Afghanistan
and revealed that she and the general
had carried on an adulterous three-year affair in two war zones —
prompting Army prosecutors Wednesday
to ask the judge to dismiss Sinclair from the service.
Choking on his words and wiping his eyes,
Sinclair apologized to the judge, the captain, his wife, his two young sons
and to an institution he has served for 27 years.
He begged to be allowed to retire at a reduced rank
so that his family may collect military benefits
“they have earned serving alongside me all these years.”
It was the close of the sentencing phase in Sinclair’s court-martial,
where he has pleaded guilty to adultery, mistreating the captain,
inappropriate relationships with two other female officers,
obstructing an investigation and other charges.
Shortly after Sinclair spoke, an Army prosecutor in a blue dress uniform
stood at the same lectern
and asked the judge, Col. James L. Pohl, to dismiss Sinclair.
Pohl, who listened to more than two hours of impassioned closing statements
from the two sides,
indicated he would impose the sentence Thursday.
Maj. Rebecca DiMuro said Sinclair had betrayed the Army and its officer corps
by using his rank and authority to exploit impressionable young officers
who came to him for guidance and leadership.
She reminded the judge that
Sinclair had pressured two officers for nude photos of themselves
and asked a third for a date.
“Every time he chooses to harm a soldier,
he harms everything it means to be an officer,” DiMuro said.
“General Sinclair let the Army down.”
DiMuro, a special-victim prosecutor,
scoffed at Sinclair’s profession of concern for his family.
She noted that on the final weekend of home leave with his family at Fort Bragg
before he was to return to duty in Afghanistan in March 2012,
he pressured a young lieutenant for a horseback riding date,
saying he was “smitten” with her.
“He begged you to consider his family,” DiMuro reminded the judge.
But when he had the chance to consider them, she said,
“he wasn’t thinking about them.”
Sinclair, 51,
one of only a few generals to face court-martial in the last 60 years,
pleaded guilty Monday to
twice misusing his government charge card to pursue the affair,
disobeying an order not to contact his mistress,
and making derogatory and sexist comments about other female officers.
A week earlier, Sinclair pleaded guilty to
impeding an investigation
by deleting sexually explicit emails and photos from a civilian woman,
possessing pornography in a war zone,
conducting inappropriate relationships with two other female officers
and asking the lieutenant for a date.
Under a plea agreement, the Army dismissed charges that
Sinclair sexually assaulted the captain
and threatened to kill her and her family if she exposed the affair.
Also dropped were charges that
the general had engaged in “open and notorious” sex
in a parked car in Germany and on a hotel balcony in Arizona.
If convicted on the most serious charges,
Sinclair would have faced life in prison and registration as a sex offender.
The veteran of five combat tours now faces up to 25½ years in prison.
However,
an agreement between prosecutors and the defense puts a cap on his sentence.
The actual sentence will be
either the cap or the judge’s sentence, whichever is shorter.
Terms of the cap agreement, known as a “quantum,”
were not disclosed, not even to the judge.
On Wednesday, prosecutors did not request prison time.
Pohl can still impose a prison sentence,
but the ultimate sentence would have to be no higher than the cap.
The judge will read the quantum after sentencing,
then reconcile any differences with his punishment.
If Sinclair is allowed to retire at reduced rank —
his lawyers proposed lieutenant colonel,
the highest position in which he served honorably —
a military review board will determine his retirement rank.
Sinclair said he had caused emotional distress for the captain, 34,
who in sometimes tearful testimony
said she was trapped and victimized by Sinclair.
She said he refused to let her out of the relationship
and drove her to threaten suicide.
The general apologized to all four female officers.
“It was my responsibility to ensure these officers were protected and promoted,
and I failed them as a leader.
For this, I am truly sorry,”
he told the judge in a low, hoarse voice,
standing a few steps from Pohl,
wearing a dress uniform and polished paratrooper’s jump boots.
Sinclair said he had no one to blame but himself:
“I put myself and the Army in this position
with my selfish, self-destructive and hurtful acts.”
He described “a deep and abiding sense of shame and remorse.”
He paused several times to wipes his eyes.
It was the third time the general had broken down in tears,
first when he told the judge about lying to his mistress about divorcing his wife,
and again when a defense lawyer read a statement Wednesday from his wife
describing how his behavior had devastated their family.
DiMuro reminded the judge of a military skit
at a roast for Sinclair in Germany in 2010,
when one male officer portraying the captain donned a brown wig
and knelt before another officer, portraying Sinclair,
as if to perform oral sex.
The skit was attended by more than 500 people,
including Sinclair’s wife, Rebecca, and the wives of other officers.
Rebecca Sinclair was sitting next to her husband that humiliating evening,
a contrast to “the family he desperately wants you to think of now,”
DiMuro told the judge.
DiMuro noted that 24 defense character witnesses,
most of them active-duty or retired officers,
had described Sinclair as an inspirational and charismatic leader devoted to his men.
The general spent more than two decades honing a reputation as
one of the Army’s most dynamic and promising officers, she said.
“He forsook all that collateral — every dime of that collateral,
in exploiting junior subordinate soldiers,”
DiMuro said.
Sinclair’s defense team, led by Philadelphia lawyer Richard L. Scheff,
selected a soft-spoken officer, Maj. Sean Foster,
to deliver a sentencing closing statement that recounted Sinclair’s service
and his wife’s military volunteer work.
A video screen displayed photos of the Sinclairs’ engagement and marriage,
and their sons, now 10 and 12.
Also on the screen were testimonial letters from Army officers, some retired,
about Sinclair’s sterling performance
before his career was destroyed by his offenses.
Foster described the captain as “flirtatious”
and said his accuser was not trapped in the affair.
“It was a relationship she wanted to be in. ...
She chose to stay.”
Foster said the charges that led to Sinclair being called
“a rapist wearing stars” by a member of Congress
had been dropped.
“The reason we are here today is because of the stuff they dismissed.”
He added: “General Sinclair has been punished enough.”
The general was removed two years ago as
deputy commander of U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan.
He has spent two years defending himself in court
with the help of a civilian law firm
and a New York public relations agency.
“Now I have lost my ability to work at my calling —
leading soldiers and planning battles,”
Sinclair told the judge.
Outside the courtroom, Scheff said
Sinclair had “committed adultery and sent racy emails,”
but the Army responded by trumping up charges
and then “pursued a failed rape case.”
Scheff has orchestrated an aggressive defense,
convincing the judge that the case was probably infected by political interference
and raising serious doubts —
even among prosecutors — about the captain’s credibility.
Asked whether he was surprised that the Army did not request prison time,
Scheff replied,
“That’s one thing we and the government agree on.”
2014-03-19-Army-Times-Sinclair-Sentencing-Day-3-During-closing-arguments-prosecution-says-Sinclair-s-actions-were-crimes-not-mistakes
During closing arguments, prosecution says Sinclair's actions were crimes, 'not mistakes'
By Jeffrey Collins and Michael Biesecker, The Associated Press
Army Times, 2014-03-19
...
A military lawyer representing Sinclair argued that
his wife, Rebecca,
had made a significant investment in the Army herself
by holding leadership positions in organizations that helped soldiers’ families.
Maj. Sean Foster said
Rebecca Sinclair and the couple’s two sons would be hurt the most
if the general lost benefits.
“These three are the only truly innocent people in this case,”
he said.
Even if Sinclair were allowed to retire and demoted by two ranks,
the defense calculated that
he would still lose $831,000 in retirement benefits over his expected life span.
And no matter what,
Sinclair will be paying a hefty price with his lost career
and ruined reputation.
“That is a life sentence in itself,” Foster said.
Sinclair broke down in tears multiple times during Wednesday’s hearing.
When a letter from his wife was read,
Sinclair buried his head in his hands,
appeared to cry and dabbed his eyes with two tissues.
In the letter,
Rebecca Sinclair says she hasn’t fully forgiven her husband
but doesn’t want the Army to punish him and his family further
with a significant reduction to his pension and other benefits.
“Believe me when I tell you that
the public humiliation and vilification he has endured
are nothing compared to
the private suffering and guilt that he lives with every day,”
writes Rebecca Sinclair, who hasn’t attended her husband’s hearings.
Jeffrey Sinclair broke down at several points
as he read a statement to the judge, pausing to collect himself.
He apologized to his family
and the women with whom he admitted inappropriate relationships.
“I’ve been frustrated and angry,
but I don’t have to look any further than the mirror for someone to blame,”
he said, noting the hearing came exactly two years after
the captain came forward with allegations on March 19, 2012.
2014-03-20-NYT-Sinclair-Sentencing-Day-3-general-apologizes-to-sexual-misconduct-victims
Army General Apologizes to Victims of Misconduct Before Being Sentenced
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 2014-03-20
THE SENTENCE
First, a comment from the author of this blog.
Although I have the greatest respect for General Sinclair's
abilities as a leader and contributions to the nation,
and note the discrepancies between the testimony of his accuser
and her previous statements to others and in her journal and emails,
even so
given the offenses to which he has pleaded guilty
and thus over which there can be no disagreement,
the sentence imposed by COL Pohl (described below)
does seem quite light.
Do not such offenses require a more severe penalty?
It seems to me justice required that
only he be punished, not his family.
The best, perhaps only, way to achieve that goal
would seem to be to impose some jail time on him,
while leaving his retirement benefits intact,
which would support his family.
It seems to me the prosecution made a mistake in not asking for jail time.
Could the judge, COL Pohl,
have imposed jail time even when the prosecution did not request it?
I do not know the answer to that legal question.
2014-03-20-Stripes-THE-SENTENCE-Sinclair-sentencing-day-4-sinclair-reprimanded-fined-case-likely-to-reignite-battle-over-military-justice
Sinclair reprimanded, fined; case likely to reignite battle over military justice
By Jennifer Hlad
Stars and Stripes, 2014-03-20
An Army general who once faced life in prison for sexual misconduct with a subordinate
ended up with a fine and a reprimand,
a verdict that surprised military justice watchers
and left unanswered many questions about
the role of command influence in criminal cases.
One of the most high-profile sexual misconduct cases in years
ended Thursday when a military judge at Fort Bragg
gave Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair a formal reprimand
and ordered him to forfeit $5,000 a month in pay for four months.
Sinclair was allowed to remain in the military,
keep his pension and avoid jail time
under a plea deal which dropped the most serious charges of
sexual assault,
“open and notorious” sex,
and threatening to kill the accuser and her family.
Instead, Sinclair, 51, pleaded guilty to
mistreating a female captain with whom he maintained a three-year relationship
and misusing a government credit card to pursue the affair,
among other lesser charges.
After the sentence was handed down,
he [read] a brief statement outside the courtroom,
the Associated Press reported.
"The system worked. I've always been proud of my Army," said Sinclair.
"All I want to do now is go north and hug my kids and my wife."
Sinclair was not given
the officer’s equivalent of a dishonorable discharge, a dismissal.
If he had been dismissed,
he would have lost all retirement pay and benefits.
But he will still go before a grade determination board
that will decide at what rank he will be allowed to retire.
Greg Rinckey, a Washington attorney and former Army judge advocate general,
said the sentence was “mildly surprising”
but “in the realm” of an appropriate sentence
for the offenses to which he admitted.
Yet the case is likely to reinforce arguments by critics that
the military justice system is flawed
and especially incapable of handling sexual offenses involving subordinates.
“This case has illustrated a military justice system
in dire need of independence from the chain of command,”
said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,
who sponsored legislation to remove sexual offense cases
from the chain of command.
John Altenburg Jr., a Washington lawyer who served as
the deputy judge advocate general for the Army from 1997 to 2001,
said that even with the plea bargain,
Sinclair could have received jail time.
Before the sentence was announced,
Altenburg said an appropriate sentence would have been dismissal,
which is the officer equivalent of a dishonorable discharge,
and several years’ confinement.
“He shamed the entire officer corps and he’s a disgrace to the uniform,”
he said.
“He undermines all senior officers in the military by what he’s done.”
In the military judicial system,
plea deals put a cap on the maximum punishment a defendant can receive,
and they must be agreed to by the defendant and convening authority.
However, the judge does not see the agreed-upon maximum punishment
until after a sentence has been delivered.
Once the judge hands down the sentence,
he or she reads the maximum sentence agreed to in the plea bargain,
and the defendant receives the lesser of the two punishments.
The plea agreement, unsealed Thursday,
called for Sinclair to serve no more than 18 months in jail,
but the judge’s punishment was much lighter.
“Some people will say he got the officer discount,”
while an enlisted soldier may have gotten a few months’ worth of confinement,
Rinckey said.
“That’s always the big issue that we see spring up …
and that’s a valid point.”
Overreach and influence
A string of high-profile cases has fueled
the ongoing debate about how the military handles sexual assaults
and how best to reform the military justice system.
But the Sinclair trial is muddier,
with details that don’t fit the framework of previous cases.
Military judge Col. James C. Pohl last week ruled that
the Army exerted unlawful command influence
when Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson,
the commanding general at Fort Bragg at the time,
turned down a plea deal for Sinclair before the trial began.
Pohl’s ruling, which followed revelations that
advocates for the accuser suggested that
not pursuing the case would look bad in the current political climate,
opened the door for a new plea deal
that Sinclair and a different general agreed to earlier this week,
which included
dropping the charges of sexual assault and “open and notorious” sex.
In return, Sinclair pleaded guilty to
mistreating the captain with whom he had a three-year affair
and misusing a government credit card to pursue the affair,
among other charges.
Command influence is inherent in the military judicial system.
Military commanders determine whether to prosecute their troops
and sign off on plea bargains and sentences.
But unlawful command influence,
or when a commander says or does something to influence his subordinates
regarding the outcome of judicial proceedings,
is “the mortal enemy of the military justice system,” said Rinckey.
Unlike the cases that raised the public and congressional conscious
about sexual assault in the military,
the unlawful command influence in the case
appeared to be working against Sinclair, rather than for him.
“I think the whole [political] atmosphere that has been permitted to occur
has made it very, very difficult
for people to think straight on this subject,”
said Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School.
“This was a train wreck.”
Fidell supports a proposal by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.,
to remove prosecution authority in serious cases
away from the victim and defendant’s military commander
and give it to an independent military prosecutors.
The plan earlier this month failed to meet the threshold
to overcome a filibuster threat in the Senate.
And though Fidell and other legal experts
believe the outcome of the Sinclair trial may well have been the same, regardless,
he said having that judicial independence
would have impacted public confidence in the way military justice is administered
and “the system would have been spared a black eye.”
"2014-03-20-Army-Times-THE-SENTENCE-Sinclair-Sentencing-Day-4-No-jail-Sinclair-reprimanded-fined-20k
No jail time: Sinclair reprimanded, docked $20K
By Jeffrey Collins and Michael Biesecker, The Associated Press
Army Times, 2014-03-20
FORT BRAGG, N.C. —
An Army general who carried on a three-year affair with a captain
and had two other inappropriate relationships with subordinates
was reprimanded and docked $20,000 in pay Thursday,
avoiding prison in one of the military's most closely watched courts-martial.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair,
the former deputy commander of the storied 82nd Airborne Division,
was believed to be the highest-ranking U.S. military officer
ever court-martialed on sexual assault charges.
But earlier this week those charges were dropped
when he pleaded guilty to adultery
and having inappropriate relationships with two other women
by asking them for nude pictures
and exchanging sexually explicit email with them.
Sinclair immediately announced his retirement,
a humiliating fall for the battle-tested commander
once regarded as a rising star in the Army.
A disciplinary board could still bust him in rank
and severely reduce his pension.
After the sentence was handed down, Sinclair, 51,
smiled and hugged his two lawyers in the courtroom.
Outside the building, he made a brief statement.
"The system worked. I've always been proud of my Army,"
said Sinclair, whose attorney said
he plans to retire to a home he recently bought in his native West Virginia.
"All I want to do now is go north and hug my kids and my wife."
The case unfolded with the Pentagon under heavy pressure
to confront what it has called
an epidemic of rape and other sexual misconduct in the ranks.
Legal experts, a women's military group and women in Congress
were shocked by the sentence and called for more changes.
U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., said it was a "laughable punishment."
"Even when the world is watching,
the military has demonstrated their incompetence at meting out justice,"
Speier said in a statement.
"This is another sordid example of
how truly broken the military justice system is.
This sentence is a mockery of military justice,
a slap on the wrist nowhere close to being proportional to Sinclair's offenses."
In another high-profile case in Washington,
a military judge found a former Naval Academy football player
not guilty of sexual assault charge Thursday after a three-day trial.
In that case, three midshipmen were originally charged but only one went to trial.
Prosecutors said the alleged victim was too drunk to consent to sex,
but attorneys for Joshua Tate, of Nashville, Tenn., disagreed.
In the Sinclair case, as part of his plea deal,
his sentence could not exceed terms in a sealed agreement
between defense lawyers and military attorneys.
The agreement, unsealed Thursday,
called for Sinclair to serve no more than 18 months in jail,
but Col. James Pohl's punishment was much lighter.
The judge did not explain specifically how he came to the sentence
and prosecutors did not immediately comment.
Capt. Cassie L. Fowler,
the military lawyer assigned to represent the accuser's interests,
had a grim expression after the sentence was imposed
and declined to comment.
Sinclair's fine breaks down to $5,000 a month for four months.
He earns about $12,000 a month.
Retired Lt. Col. Gary D. Solis,
who teaches law at West Point and Georgetown University
,
called Pohl's ruling lenient.
"I can't believe it," said Solis,
who served 26 years of active duty in the Marine Corps
and tried hundreds of cases as a military judge.
"I know Judge Pohl to be one of the best judges in the Army judicial system,
but ... this is an individual who should not be a general officer.
He should have gone to jail and dismissed from the Army."
Sinclair will now go before Fort Bragg commander Maj. Gen. Clarence K.K. Chinn,
who approved Sinclair's plea deal,
and he'll get either an oral or written reprimand.
Then he'll appear before a board to determine whether he will lose any rank,
which could cost him
hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits.
The defense calculated that
if Sinclair were allowed to retire and be demoted by two ranks,
he would lose $831,000 in retirement benefits by age 82.
In closing arguments,
prosecutors argued
Sinclair should be thrown out of the Army and lose his military benefits,
while the defense said
that would harm his innocent wife and their two sons the most.
Prosecutors did not ask the judge to send Sinclair to jail,
even though the maximum penalty he faced was more than 20 years.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys offered contrasting arguments about
the seriousness of the misdeeds that felled the general.
"It's not just one mistake. Not just one lapse in judgment.
It was repeated,"
prosecutor Maj. Rebecca DiMuro said.
"They are not mistakes.
We are not in the court of criminal mistakes.
These are crimes."
The general also pleaded guilty to
using his government-issued credit card to pay for trips to see his mistress
and other conduct unbecoming an officer.
In the charges that were dropped as part of the plea deal,
Sinclair had been accused of twice forcing the female captain
to perform oral sex during their affair.
The Army's case against Sinclair started to crumble as
questions arose about his primary accuser's credibility
and whether military officials improperly rejected a previous plea deal
because of political concerns.
Greg Jacob of the Service Women's Action Network, an equal rights group,
said the sentencing reflected a case that fell apart long ago.
"A system shaky enough to be rocked by allegations of undue command influence
cannot provide justice for our troops,"
said Jacob, the group's policy director and a former Marine.
"The Gen. Sinclair case will go down in history as
yet another reason we need Sen. (Kirsten) Gillibrand's
Military Justice Improvement Act."
That legislation, which was defeated in the Senate earlier this month,
would have stripped commanders of the authority to prosecute cases
and given that power to seasoned military lawyers.
"This case has illustrated a military justice system in dire need of independence from the chain of command,"
Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who fought the bill,
said the case reinforced her argument.
"As a former sex crimes prosecutor,
Claire knows how difficult these cases can be to prosecute,
and this case is obviously a complicated one.
But one of its lessons highlights what we already know —
that commanders are often more aggressive than prosecutors
in pursuing prosecutions and vetting these cases,"
spokeswoman Sarah Feldman said.
On Wednesday, a letter from Sinclair's wife, Rebecca, was read aloud.
The general buried his head in his hands, appeared to cry
and dabbed his eyes with tissues.
In the letter, Rebecca Sinclair said she hasn't fully forgiven her husband
but that she didn't want the Army to punish him and his family further
with a significant reduction to his pension and other benefits.
"Believe me when I tell you that
the public humiliation and vilification he has endured
are nothing compared to
the private suffering and guilt that he lives with every day,"
she wrote.
Sinclair's wife did not attend the court proceedings.
2014-03-21-NYT-THE-SENTENCE-Sinclair-Sentencing-Day-4-general-sinclair-is-sentenced
General Is Reprimanded, but Spared Jail, in Misconduct Case
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 2014-03-21
FORT BRAGG, N.C., —
Bringing to an end the most closely watched sexual misconduct trial in the military, a judge on Thursday morning reprimanded Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair for mistreating an Army captain who was his mistress, among other offenses, but did not sentence him to jail time and allowed him to remain in the military.
General Sinclair was also ordered to forfeit $5,000 a month in pay for four months, but will be allowed to keep his pension and other benefits.
The decision by the judge, Col. James L. Pohl, was a sweeping victory for the defense: a plea agreement reached by General Sinclair’s lawyers and military prosecutors earlier this week called for capping prison time at 18 months and did not ensure that he could keep his pension.
...
Though the judge allowed General Sinclair to remain in the military and denied prosecutors’ request to dismiss him from the service — an action that would have stripped him of his military pension — his chief defense lawyer, Richard L. Scheff, said after the sentencing that the general “will be putting in his retirement papers.” He is likely to retire as a lieutenant colonel, the last rank he held before the misconduct covered in his guilty pleas took place.
From the start, the case was a public relations disaster for the Army, and over time it became a legal nightmare for the prosecution.
Initially, it seemed an abject example of how far the military, focused for a decade on two wars, had fallen behind other institutions in accepting women as equals in the workplace, providing ammunition to critics who believed that a Mad Men-era ethos still pervaded the service, with some male officers struggling to view female counterparts as anything more than sexual objects.
...
But the evidence also suggested that elements of the most serious charges against the general — that he had forced the captain to perform oral sex on him twice and threatened her and her family if she revealed their affair — were nowhere near clear-cut.
At a hearing in late 2012 known as an Article 32 — roughly akin to a preliminary hearing in civilian criminal courts — it became clear that the captain had been sleeping with him regularly. By her own testimony, his threat to kill her and her family came immediately after they finished having sex, when she had told him that she was looking forward to meeting his wife.
The woman also testified that when she confided the affair to a friend, he asked whether the general had raped her. She replied: “No. He never raped me. It was consensual.” And she acknowledged writing a journal entry about the general where she stated that “my biggest fear is that there is something still in his marriage.”
...
2014-03-20-WP-THE-SENTENCE-Sinclair-Sentencing-Day-4-disgraced-army-general-jeffrey-a-sinclair-receives-fine-no-jail-time
Disgraced Army general, Jeffrey A. Sinclair, gets $20,000 fine, no jail time
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post, 2014-03-20
2014-03-22-Spokesman-spokane-firm-global-compusearch-plays-role-in
Spokane firm Global Compusearch plays role in general’s court-martial
Tom Sowa
The Spokesman-Review, 2014-03-22
A Spokane digital forensic investigation firm
spent the past 13 months working with attorneys representing Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair,
the Army officer at the center of
the most closely watched sexual misconduct court-martial in the U.S. military.
The team from Spokane-based Global Compusearch spent that time
scouring and indexing information
from nearly 40 phones, tablets or computers used by the general
or by his accuser, a 34-year-old Army captain ...
The digital information gathered from the assorted phones and computers
played a key role in the case’s outcome:
An Army judge in North Carolina this week
allowed Sinclair, 51, to agree to a plea bargain.
Marcus Lawson, the CEO of Global Compusearch,
said the Sinclair case was
one of the most demanding his firm has handled in recent years.
Among the key findings Global Compusearch provided was
proving that the accuser had testified untruthfully at a January hearing
about finding an old iPhone that might have contained evidence of the affair.
Lawson testified that
the woman’s account of having recently found the phone and turning it on
was not true.
Her iPhone had been charged and restarted two weeks earlier than she had claimed.
The military’s own expert later came to the same conclusion.
“That discovery certainly questioned her credibility,”
said Lawson, who testified at that hearing via telephone.
Early this month Lawson traveled to Fort Bragg, N.C.,
and remained there until Friday,
prepared to testify in person as the trial progressed.
The January testimony that eroded belief in the woman’s honesty
led the former chief prosecutor to quit the case.
Both Lawson and company President Josiah Roloff said
the defense team provided the court with messages, communications and emails
that showed the general and the woman had an ongoing consensual relationship.
...
The phones, computers and tablets examined
included those used by Sinclair, his accuser and two other women
he is suspected of having affairs with while deployed.
Some of the devices were personal, and others were Army-issued.
Global Compusearch has handled
close to 1,000 cases for various U.S. military branches,
including the U.S. Coast Guard, over its 14-year history, Roloff said.
Those are both for prosecutors and defense teams.
Most of its military cases in recent years
involve sexual assaults between service members,
he added.
Such accusations end up being resolved primarily by
retrieving messages, photos and voice mails
off the phones of an accuser or defendant, he said.
In the Sinclair case,
hundreds of the texts, emails and communications had been deleted
but could be recovered using standard digital tools, Roloff said.
Roloff was the primary examiner assigned to examine the old iPhone owned by the accuser at the center of the pivotal January court hearing, he added.
Roloff said his professional role is being a neutral gatherer of information.
Even so, he said he found himself thinking
the assault charges leveled at Sinclair were not supported
by the evidence he and his team had pulled from the devices.
“That was just my personal reaction,”
Roloff said, adding he found the judge’s approval of the plea bargain
a proper ending to a complicated and difficult case.
“The judge did a good job of looking at all the evidence and making a fair decision,”
Roloff said.
...
2014-06-27-Hill-Joyner-Bracknell-explaining-the-sinclair-demotion
Explaining the Sinclair demotion
By James Joyner, contributor, and Butch Bracknell
The Hill, 2014-06-27
Labels: crime, military, military justice, sexual assault charge
