Redeployment Journal (Days 4–6)

This is the second part of a series. Part one was published here recently. Any names in this part of the journal have been changed to protect identities.

Day 4

I got up at 0430, showered, and made my way over to the building where I would catch the airport shuttle. I showed up with all my gear at 0530, the clerk gave me a pass to get on the shuttle, and I sat down and waited. I was wearing the recently purchased contractor costume: black polo shirt, 511 tactical khakis, and my tan desert boots. What a look, I thought. I had not been around civilians or in civilian territory in over six months.

When the time came, I boarded the small shuttle van. We pulled away from Ali Al Salem as the sun was coming up and there wasn’t another vehicle on the road. It was eerie. Sand stretched in all directions. The desert at dawn could be a very beautiful place with a stark desolation all its own. I wondered if this would be the last time I would ever set eyes on it, hoped it would be, and felt not a twinge of sadness as I pondered it. I wanted out.

The drive from Ali Al Salem took about thirty minutes. I wasn’t quite prepared for how we arrived since when I had flown in months before I had done it on a chartered military flight; we had landed and immediately boarded big charter buses without going through the terminal. This time it would be different. The van literally pulled up to the terminal as if we were civilian passengers, and I realized we were. I got out, grabbed all my gear, and walked into the terminal, looking for the Gulf Air ticket counter. I quickly learned the Kuwaitis did airport security more efficiently than we did back in the states. The entire ticket area was bordered by what looked like bullet-proof glass, and there were plenty of agents checking people in, with no lines anywhere. Once I had checked my big bags and received my boarding pass, I walked down a walkway boarded by the same bullet-proof glass to a single security agent who asked for my ID and boarding pass. He inspected it and asked me to put my pack on the scanner. He ran it through and gave it back to me. “You’re cleared Sir.” I walked past him and into the terminal. No removing shoes, belts, pocket clutter or laptop. Quick, efficient, effective.

I walked into the massive, modern terminal at Kuwait International and stopped a minute to look around. It had a three story main atrium, almost like a mall, and I scanned the offerings. After months in the middle of the Iraqi desert, it was sensory overload. I could buy anything from a sports car, to a Harley, to a Potbelly sandwich, to a myriad of “duty free” items. I still had two hours until my flight boarded. My head was craning left and right when it did a double take. “Starbucks.” I stared at the sign for a few seconds. I had been drinking chow-hall coffee and coffee brewed on our drip system in the LSST for over six months. I hadn’t had any really good coffee in that span. Not like this anyway. I started walking toward the Starbucks sign like a zombie.

It is difficult to explain what it’s like to get your first taste of great coffee, or great food, or a cold beer, after not having it in six months. I purchased my Pike Place and sat down at a table. My mouth was shooting involuntary bursts everywhere. I put the cup to my lips and savored the taste as it immediately lit up my taste buds. Holy cow, that was good. It actually brought involuntary tears to my eyes, it tasted so damn good. I recovered and looked around. A few people were looking at me as if they were concerned with my mental health. I smiled and nodded to reassure them that all was okay.

After another efficient process, I boarded the Gulf Air 737 and found my requisite aisle seat. The plane was immaculately clean. There were only about two dozen people spread around the cabin. I also noticed the flight attendants were dressed like American flight attendants from the 50s or 60s, as if I had been momentarily transported back to another time. We were still sitting at the gate, but they immediately began serving as if the entire airplane was first class. “Would you like a beverage Sir?” I did a double take, looked around, smiled as if I were being had, and when she didn’t smile back I realized she was serious. “Sure, uh, I’ll have some orange juice please.” She smiled and went off to the back of the aircraft. Minutes late she returned with my drink. I had never been served anything on an American airline before takeoff.

We taxied out and took off heading south. As soon as we were airborne, I thought, “I’m on way home out of the AOR.” The two hour flight down the west coast of the Persian Gulf was one of the most relaxing trips I have ever taken. From my seat on the right side of the aircraft, I could see the coast of Saudi Arabia off to the right. The visibility was incredible on what was a typically sunny, clear day. The kingdom seemed sandy and desolate, belying the riches held by the ruling elites. As wealthy a nation as it was, I considered the irony that most of the nineteen September 11th hijackers had come from Saudi Arabia.

We landed heading south at Manama’s international airport. The Navy counsel I would be working with met me in the terminal after I cleared customs with only my U.S. military identification, which I would come to findserved almost as well as a passport. On the way over, we were told we shouldn’t bring our passports because we didn’t need them. Of course, now that I was traveling alone and without being attached to any military unit, I was without it. Fortunately, my military ID and orders served as a good substitute for my passport. They would open many doors in the next two weeks.

The first thing that hit me in Manama was the insufferable humidity. Unlike the Iraqi desert, the 100 plus degree temperature was accompanied in Bahrain by 100 percent humidity. Bahrain is essentially an island-kingdom in the Persian Gulf, connected to Saudi Arabia by a thin causeway. While it had taken me a short time to acclimatize to the heat in Iraq, it got to be okay to deal with as long as one stayed properly hydrated. It really was a “dry heat,” like Phoenix in the summer. Bahrain on the other hand assaulted me like a wet oven when I walked out the terminal doors. “Wow.” “Yeah it’s pretty bad Sir,” said one of the counsel, a Navy Lieutenant. “Holy cow.”

We made the short drive from the airport down to the Naval Support Activity, the U.S. navy base that served as the headquarters for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which operated in the Persian Gulf. I checked into the BOQ at the NSA and walked over to the legal office to see if I could access my email and get up to speed on what was happening with this case. After catching up, reading the case file and the charge sheets and speaking with the counsel on the case, I learned the case had to do with a series of alleged larcenies. The accused, a Sailor on the Reagan, was charged with stealing multiple items from other Sailors and Marines on the ship, as well as stealing various items of government-owned military equipment. This wasn’t good for the accused. Stealing from other Sailors and Marines was viewed as one of the more aggravating crimes one could commit in the military, especially in the junior enlisted ranks where the troops lived close together, depended on trust, and were usually between the ages of 18 and 22; they didn’t make a lot of money and their personal property was very important to them. Apparently, this Sailor had not only stolen a lot of stuff from his colleagues, he had allegedly sold it so it couldn’t be recovered. Still, it was only a bunch of allegations at this point, and knowing I might end up having to determine guilt or innocence, I reserved judgment.

They apparently had the kid charged in the brig on board the ship, and they wanted to expedite the trial for two reasons: the first was legal: military law provided that detaining someone in jail before trial started the speedy trial clock for purposes of the trial, meaning the government had to bring the accused to trial as expeditiously as possible, and the second reason was the ship’s captain wanted the case tried on board the ship because he wanted to continue the ship’s mission at sea while also having the case serve an educational and deterrent purpose. The plan was to set up a “courtroom” in one of the hangar bays so hundreds of Sailors and Marines could attend and observe.

The more I read and the more we talked, the more I marveled; military justice had come a long way after the Military Justice Act of 1950. The system actually provided more rights to a military accused than the federal or state criminal justice system did. But it was also extremely flexible; whether a case was charged or not was not up to military prosecutors. It was decided by the commander of the accused. And courts-martial were not tied to any location or courthouse; the procedures allowed for courts being held in an expeditionary environment and being tried pretty much anywhere. I had presided over several in Iraq that were held in ramshackle courtrooms built out of plywood, which was actually a step up from the courtroom tents that had been used in Vietnam. So it was really not a surprise that the Reagan’s captain wanted to do the case on the carrier.

But the question was how. “How are they going to get us out there? Plane?Helo?” “Sir, I think the plan is to fly us out on a C-2 Greyhound. We do the case the day we fly in or the day after, then fly back when we finish the case.” This still sounded a bit crazy to me. But the allure of doing something like this was undeniable. This was the kind of thing that only happened in movies or TV shows like JAG. I had been on active duty as a uniformed lawyer since 1997 and had never heard of a case being done on a ship. There were no rules against it, but the logistical and practical issues associated with it made it seem far-fetched. Most situations like this resulted in the accused being removed from the ship or wherever his command was located and returned back to the United States or some other base to be prosecuted. Operational necessity usually required it.

I told the counsel we needed to get a determination as soon as possible as to how and when we would travel out to the Reagan. I left and decided to head back to my room, get settled and explore the small base that was the NSA Bahrain and get a bite to eat. It was getting late.

At about 2100, I got a call from the prosecutor, who told me we would be ferried out the Reagan the following morning. I got the gear I would need on the ship together and prepared to fly out. I called home and told Patty what I was going to be doing and where. I didn’t know how long I would be out on the ship.

Day 5

The following morning, we had breakfast and drove over to the airfield to wait for our flight. We boarded the prop-driven C-2 Greyhound and strapped in to the rear-facing seats. It was a small 26-seater, with rows of two seats on each side of a narrow aisle running down the middle. The seats faced the rear of the aircraft because on landing we would be trapping an arresting cable like any other aircraft landing on a carrier. The rapid deceleration and jolt that accompanied a carrier landing was better and more safely distributed around the body when one was strapped into a seat facing rearward, which allowed for absorption of the shock of deceleration all along your supported back instead of having straps try to hold you in the seat if you faced forward with no support for your neck. That was the theory anyway.

In addition to the three counsel (one prosecutor and two defense attorneys), the court reporter and me, there were about six others coming along on the flight. We got the safety brief from the crew chief, who told us the flight would be about an hour, we might have some chop heading out to the carrier, and that it was imperative on landing that we be strapped in as tightly as possible before landing. I wondered what the physical sensation of catching the arresting cable would feel like. The crew chief claimed it was no big deal. But I reserved judgment.

We took off and banked left out over the Persian Gulf, the scene of so many momentous conflicts in recent American history. It looked like any other body of water I had ever flown over. I thought the water looked innocuous enough; it was the people who lived near it who had been fighting for centuries. The flight was bumpy in a few places, but pretty uneventful. About an hour out the crew chief came back and told us to get ready for landing. “Sir, this is going to be a little different than anything you’ve experienced before. It’s really no big deal, but just make sure your back and head are pressed against the seatback when we land. You’ll get pressed into the chair for an instant, then the force will slack off. Don’t unstrap until I come by and tell you to.”

After all the crew chief’s build up, we hit the deck much slower and less violently than I had expected. The arresting cable didn’t stop us abruptly, but quite smoothly. I was pleasantly surprised. We gathered our gear and filed out the rear of the aircraft in a column. I was struck by how strong the winds were as we made our away across the asphalt of the 1,000 foot long carrier that was also as wide as a football field. I wondered if I drove a golf ball from one end of the flight deck if I could even reach the other. I doubted it.

We were being guided by a Navy Lieutenant. He took us below deck to where our quarters would be. The ship was so massive it took a while to get there, but when we finally did, I was given my own small room with a bunk and little desk. The room also had a small locker and some space for me to stow my gear, which wasn’t much. “Sir, you can hook your laptop into the ship’s network right there at the desk. It’s CAC-enabled. If you have any problems just let me know and I’ll get a tech down here.” “You guys have techs?” “Yes, Sir.” I had never seen a tech in my life in the Marine Corps; it was always some civilian employee who seemingly took days to come to your office. “Can I log into my email account from here?” “Yes Sir. If you have a .mil account then Outlook will load your email for you just like if you were ashore.”

After all of us were settled, the Lieutenant took us on a short tour, and showed us the wardroom where we would eat our meals while we were aboard the ship. He took us through several areas, including a quick stop on the bridge, and through the hangar deck. I didn’t want to loiter anywhere too long; Marine field-grade officers were usually a rare sight on aircraft carriers, and I wanted to avoid being drawn into any discussions about the case or getting in anyone’s way as they were working. I decided to get in a work out at the ship’s gym and then retire to my room until dinner.

After a surprisingly good dinner, I was lying on my bunk reading through the various pleadings the counsel had provided when I heard a knock at the hatch. I opened it and it was the counsel. “Sir, Seaman Jackson is going to change his plea to guilty.” This sometimes happened on the eve of a trial. It was a mixed bag because if you were worth your salt as a judge, you had spent some time preparing for a jury trial, which required vetting all the questionnaires submitted by the pool of possible panel members, preparing judicial instructions on the law that you would give as issues came up during the trial and before the panel members went into their deliberations during the guilt phase, and even reviewing what other evidence the counsel had disclosed to try and get ahead of any issues that might come up.

If there was a conviction, military appellate courts were extremely paternalistic in their review of the trial judge’s actions, so as a judge you wanted to maximize the efficiency and pace at which the trial was conducted, but you also wanted to make sure you did not rush through decision-making and err to the detriment of the accused. The more prepared you were, the less likely you would be to make a mistake. That was my theory anyway.

When a military accused changed his plea at the last minute, all that preparation went out the window, but the judge then had to prepare for the guilty plea session, which was much more lengthy and drawn out than a guilty plea taken by a judge in federal or state court. It wasn’t as simple as the accused admitting his guilt; a judge had to establish a detailed factual basis for the plea. The judge had to be satisfied there were sufficient facts to support the plea and that those facts satisfied the legal elements of the crime. This involved a lengthy plea colloquy of questions and answers back and forth between the judge and the accused.

In addition, the fact that military court-martial sentencing hearings were contested meant that both sides could call witnesses, the government to put on victim impact or other evidence in aggravation of the offenses, and the accused to bring forth character witnesses and evidence of prior good performance to mitigate the punishment. So it wasn’t like I would be out of there in ten minutes. But instead of what could be a multiple day jury trial, I would likely be finished in a day. This was all good news.

I told the counsel we would all three go down to the small wardroom the captain had reserved for our use during our stay to have a conference with the court reporter. We needed to cover the logistics of the case, whether they had any evidence to put on or witnesses to call. The case would still go in the morning, but we needed to notify the ship’s legal officer that we would no longer need our pool of possible jurors; they could be released to go about their normal duties.

The original plan was to hold the court-martial in a large enough area that several spectators could observe. This had been part of the captain’s desire to “preserve good order and discipline.” Indeed, the Preamble to the Manual for Courts-Martial states: “The purpose of military law is to promote justice, to assist in maintaining good order and discipline in the armed forces, to promote efficiency and effectiveness in the military establishment, and thereby to strengthen the national security of the United States.” The captain wanted his crew — at least some of them — to see military justice played out, all the while being underway at sea. The guilty plea would now obviate the need for such drama, but that didn’t necessarily mean the captain was totally out of luck. In any event, I had to leave that to the ship’s legal officer; such concerns were not mine as a judge.

I told the counsel I didn’t see a need to hold a guilty plea in some huge space or forum. I suggested a smaller room if one could be arranged. And if the command still wanted people to attend, they could certainly do that; space would just be limited. I directed the counsel to communicate with the ship’s legal officer and report back to me as soon as possible; I wanted to start the case early the next morning.

Just around 2200, they returned to my cabin and informed me we would be using a large conference room that could seat the counsel, the accused, our court reporter, and me at a long table and about two dozen spectators around the room. “Who are the spectators going to be?” “Just people from his unit, Sir.”“Nobody in the chain of command, right?” This could create an issue of unlawful command influence down the line; the notion being that since the ship’s captain had convened the case, if either he or any of his subordinates were present, there was an argument that their presence could influence the outcome of a case. Since this was now going to be a judge alone case, I wasn’t worried about that; no one could ever influence anything I ever did as a judge, but the optics of it might influence the accused sailor or look bad on the record. I wanted to avoid any of those issues. “No Sir, these are all going to be junior Sailors and Marines.” “Are any of them victims?” “There are a few, Sir.” “Ok, well I don’t want any victims who are going to testify sitting in there. They’ll have to wait until they testify. After they’ve testified, they can take a seat in the room to watch the rest of it.” “Roger that, Sir, I’ll take care of it,” said the prosecutor.

Day 6

The following morning I got up, showered, shaved, got dressed and ate. We arrived at the conference room at 0800. Everything was already in place, complete with a fresh coffee and pastry mess in fine Navy style. I took coffee only. As we got settled, the accused sailor was brought into the room and seated next to the defense counsel. I asked both sides if they were ready to go on the record, they concurred, and we called the court to order at about 0815.

I took the accused through the preliminaries of going through his rights, reading over the charges, asking him if understood his rights and the charges and what the maximum sentence could be in his case. Eventually we turned to the basics of the charges. He was charged with several counts of larceny for stealing various items from his shipmates, who were both Sailors and Marines. This could be an extremely aggravating offense in the military, where the ability to trust one another was of utmost importance. A “barracks thief” was among the vilest forms of life. It was just as bad — maybe worse — in the very close confines of a ship at sea, where junior personnel were often dozens to a single space and stacked four high in their bunks.

During our discussion, the accused admitted to having stolen various items such as headphones, IPods, cell phones, and even a laptop computer. He apparently liked electronics. He explained to me that some of the items had been recovered stashed in his bunk while he had simply pawned most of the rest at ports of call for cash. That wasn’t good. In the community of the junior enlisted, items like Ipods, headphones and cell phones were immensely important and valuable, both monetarily and for morale. These ranks didn’t make much money, and their music and phones were very important to them. They couldn’t so easily just go out and buy new ones like an officer or staff NCO. The fact that he had pawned many of the stolen items meant the victims would never recover them. He also admitted to stealing cash out of the register in the mess hall.

This all sounded like one of two things to me, either this kid was a kleptomaniac or he was using the money to fund something, typically a drug habit. In prior cases this was usually revealed by a random urinalysis, which everyone in the military is routinely subjected to. That usually resulted in charges for larceny and drug use. But there weren’t any charges for drug use in this case. I wondered how he was eventually caught.

Eventually it came out. “Sir, I was making my rack one day and had forgotten I had stuffed a lot of the stuff under it. When I yanked the mattress a bunch of the stuff came falling out onto the deck and some other guys saw it.” “What was it?” “There was an Ipod I had taken from somebody and some phone cards.” “And somebody recognized the IPod as belonging to them?” “Well when I took that Ipod it had some phone cards rubber-banded to it, and that’s how somebody recognized it. One of the Sailors said, ‘Hey, that’s Jones’s Ipod, isn’t it?’ And it just snowballed from there.”

In the end, I learned his motive was to sell the stolen merchandise for cash and load it onto his own phone cards so he could call home and talk to his family and girlfriend. “So you were able to have long phone conversations with people you care about at the expense of the other Sailors and Marines?” “Yes Sir.” I had the sneaking suspicion this wasn’t the only thing he was funding, but I hadn’t seen any evidence of it yet, and regardless, the motive wasn’t necessary to support the factual basis for the plea. He had more than satisfied the factual and legal requirements.

I accepted his plea and found him guilty. We then heard from a litany of victim witnesses, who described for me what had been taken from them and how the loss had impacted them. Sailors and Marines painted me a visual tapestry of workouts and bunk time without their jams, how bad it sucked not to have their cell phones, and how this or that phone card still had about 20 bucks worth of time left on it when it was stolen. I also heard from the Sailor whose laptop was taken and hocked. His loss was perhaps the most costly as the laptop was an expensive one and contained a lot of personal information and material.

The witnesses took their seats and it was time for argument. The government asked me to award a sentence of 180 days and a punitive discharge from the Navy. The defense emphasized that to this point the Sailor had an outstanding record and had never been in any trouble before. And perhaps most importantly, although I was not authorized to order restitution, the defense had gotten out ahead of that by promising in the plea agreement to pay each victim back in accord with their respective monetary losses. The accused had somehow worked a deal with his family, who were going to make payment. This didn’t replace the stolen items, but it was better than nothing. In the end though, I still felt I had to award a sentence that served the primary purpose of military justice: to preserve good order and discipline.

“Accused and counsel please rise. Seaman Jackson, it is my duty as military judge to inform you that this court-martial sentences you to be reduced to paygrade E-1, to be confined for a period of 90 days, to thereafter perform a period of hard labor without confinement for 30 days, and to be discharged from the Naval service with a bad-conduct discharge. You may be seated.” Seaman Jackson would go immediately into the ship’s brig to be transferred to a shore confinement facility as soon as practicable. When released, he would do a month of hard labor without confinement, which was at the discretion of his commanding officer. Although many considered this particular kind of punishment outdated and few of my fellow judges ever awarded it, I saw it as an outstanding tool for a command to get the attention of its other members; when someone was in the brig, nobody saw him. But when someone had to go pick up trash from sun up until work started and then had to leave work and pick up more trash, or scrub toilets or perform difficult manual labor, the punishment was open and obvious. Under the law, commanders could be very creative in what kinds of “hard labor” they came up with. As long as it wasn’t outright harassment with no valid military purpose, it could be extremely effective in deterring the individual and others who might seek to emulate his transgressions.

I asked the counsel if there was anything else, and they said no. I adjourned the court-martial, everyone came to attention, I told them to carry on, and everyone dispersed. I spent the remainder of the day at the gym again, bought a few souvenirs from the ship’s gift shop, and passed the time by catching up on my email. I packed up my gear and made ready for the flight off the carrier in the morning.