Did he? Like what? Whatever he did before he took off was already adjudicated. Then he went AWOL. What other parts of the UCMJ did he violate? The UCMJ mentions nothing about the Korean border. Maybe they can get him for violating some standing general order from USFK about the border. If it’s not in the UCMJ he can’t be tried for it.
How about violating a lawful order? I’m sure he was given a verbal order to get on the plane back to the U.S., along with written orders telling him to report to his next duty station by a certain date. He instead joined a tour group and dashed across the border. That’s willful disregard of a lawful order and is certainly punishable under the UCMJ.
Indeed. It is also, arguably (and just off the of my head, because I was in the Navy and it happened from time to time) “missing movement.” While it was more commonly referred to as “missing ship’s movement” in my naval context, it does in fact apply to aircraft as well. Article 87 of the UCMJ to be exact (and here this is not off the top of my head, I went ahead and looked it up):
Any person subject to this chapter who, through neglect or design, misses the movement of a ship, aircraft, or unit with which the person is required in the course of duty to move shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
But that’s almost beside the point. Because even if we discount entirely plausible charges under articles 87 (as above), 92 (failure to obey an order, as you suggest), or anything else some creative law-talking person wanted to dig up (article 134 is always a good one!) and just stick with article 86 (AWOL) there is a huuuuuge difference between going AWOL by leaving your base in Texas and going home to mom and dad in Virginia versus, you know, running across what is otherwise (outside the JSA) one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world to a country that the US does not recognize and which is openly hostile to the US and its allies.
Oh, also desertion (article 85). Because when you run away with the intent of not returning (which certainly seems to have been his intent, given his choice of countries to run away to and what we know about how past deserters have been received there) that’s a whole 'nother level.
Was just thinking about this. Seeing as the Korean war never finished on paper, the DMZ is just the result of a “temporary” ceasefire. Could he face desertion charges?
Great research there @ASL_v2.0.
For sure there’s a lot of overlap in those articles. Implying that if a military prosecutor chose to throw the book at him, there’d be quite a list of charges to pick from. Possibly including picking all of them.
I do not recall how the concept of “lesser included offense” works under UCMJ. For example, if you go AWOL you’re failing to obey the general order not to do that. And as soon as your unit travels anywhere without you, now you’ve missed a movement. Which could be as simple as them deploying 10 klicks away for an afternoon field exercise and back home for bed again.
My late first wife was a JAG. Sadly I’ll not be getting her input on this one. Although as a general matter I recall the general attitude about troublesome low-end enlisted was to simply do the minimum paperwork to justify kicking them out and save DoD any more money feeding and paying the twit, tying up court and command time, etc.
As you say, the politics of AWOLing / deserting through the JSA is the potential elephant in the UCMJ room. And that’s a matter of Presidential / SecDef / JCS discretion that will filter down to some Captain at Ft. Bliss or wherever who’ll be told how to dispose of this case.
Desertion does not require a war or being overseas. You could desert your unit in North Dakota merely by going home early for the day and announcing on your way out you do not intend to return to work ever. Simple as that.
I guess desertion in the face of the enemy then?
Perhaps you’re thinking of article 99, misbehavior before the enemy? Seems like a bit of a stretch to me. I mean, if you want to play technicalities like “well, it’s only a cease fire so the war never ended” then it seems you could just as easily argue “well, Congress never adopted a formal declaration of war, so it was never a war to begin with.”
FWIW, I reject both arguments (and of course, “enemy” does not require a war in any event). Practically speaking, there was a war, but it ended 70 years ago—simple as that. But more to the point, in as much as I think King did a bit more then just go AWOL, there are plenty of other charges available that don’t require such a reach as article 99, and which would be neither so politically or diplomatically charged, nor legally questionable.
To my mind, @Loach’s theory is still plausible—they might just call it AWOL and separate him through an administrative proceeding with an other than honorable discharge and not much fanfare, but I could easily see them going at least as far as a Special Court Martial, just so they can boot him out with a Bad Conduct Discharge. Because he was probably already on his way to an administrative separation and an OTH if he’d boarded the plane and reported to Fort Bliss as ordered. If he doesn’t get anything more than that now, then it’s kind of like no consequence for what could easily have become a decades long incident.
Evidently, the charges include eight counts, one of which is desertion, and the other is for possession of child pornography.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Army private who fled to North Korea before being returned home to the United States last month has been detained by the U.S. military, two officials said Thursday night, and is facing charges including desertion and possessing sexual images of a child.
The charge sheet has not been released to the public yet. Once it has, I hope to find it online and will post a link here.
Child porn? Throw him in prison and let the other inmates know about it.
Okay. I really despise comments like that. It’s simply, IMHO, advocating for cruel and inhuman punishment.
Another thing is that the military’s prisons are not run like civilian prisons are. There are a number of reasons for this and I don’t think this thread is the venue for that discussion. I can say that one option that plays into the reason is that the military has one option the civilian world does not have: kick the offender out. Permanent separation from society in the civilian world is confinement for life.
That’s all much different than what was originally put out. Everything I read seemed to indicate that his punishment was over and he was just being sent stateside to be processed out. Now they are saying he had very serious charges pending and just made him pinky swear to get on the plane.
I have the distinct feeling that they figured he was more trouble than he was worth and if he HAD returned, he’d have been forced out, very possibly less than honorably, but not charged with the full array of crimes. As Monty implied, dump him in the civilian population and be done with him than all the work of charging and trying him.
Of course, Travis King decided to go in a different direction as it were. And now they feel they might as well throw the book at him. The child porn though is quite different from the other reported behaviors of the individual, both before and during his service. I do wonder if his family is going to continue to give him unconditional support in light of that particular element, although the reporting is very clear to state that his family reminds everyone of his presumption of innocence.
In a statement shared with CNN, King’s mother, Claudine Gates, said she loves her son “unconditionally” and is “extremely concerned about his mental health.”
“As his mother, I ask that my son be afforded the presumption of innocence,” she said.
“A mother knows her son, and I believe something happened to mine while he was deployed. The Army promised to investigate what happened at Camp Humphries, and I await the results,” Gates added.
From the CNN article.
Anyway, I’ve said earlier that military treatment, even at it’s most benign is at best a carefully managed psychological and physical near-torture, albeit one that is generally given a pass as voluntary and arguably a necessary evil. It’s certainly possible that his experiences drove an already troubled individual over the edge. But … I doubt. Seems more likely that based on everything discussed in the thread that they were always violent, angry, and looking for a time and place to explode. And had done so on multiple occasions. And it blew up in his face, landed him in jail, and then he decided to quite literally go for broke (being in NK).
And that’s leaving out the child porn accusation. I don’t see how that can be tied to his experience in the military.
On all of it though, we’ll have to see.
He looks young. That “child porn” charge could be a selfie sent by his girlfriend. Yes, kiddie porn is horrible, but I’m suspicious of what gets lumped into that category today.
This seems plausible to me as well. His unit in Korea (which wasn’t even in Korea anymore) was probably eager enough to be done with him as to not delay things by initiating new charges. But now that King has accrued more serious charges, they’re going to want to deal with them because (1) it’d look bad for them if they didn’t and (2) they can get some more substantial punishment and a punitive discharge out of the offenses. That last point by itself is often the dividing line between punishment and not-punishment for dealing with people who are already on their way out. The chain of command can be vindictive, if nothing else.
But of course here I suspect the first point is an at least equal motivator.
And sent years ago. Still equally unlawful, but the interchangeability between “…of a minor” and “…of a child” can confuse people.
There is that.
The military also has historically had a bad habit of shifting blame away from the command by claiming something outré about some troop. When a turret exploded on the USS Iowa ~35 years go, almost certainly due to aging badly stored propellent, they managed to claim it was sabotage by a gay sailor. The gay was by far the most important part of that story, much more so than the purported sabotage.
Nowadays being gay doesn’t carry nearly the sting it once did, even inside the military. So child porn is the new “unspeakable act” to divert attention from the real issue.
Actually, the article gives more detail, and says:
The charging document does not provide significant detail on any of the allegations, though it does accuse King of knowingly possessing a video of a child engaging in sexual conduct last July 10 and says that he solicited a user of Snapchat, a social media platform, to produce images of underage sexual activity.
I guess that’s a motive to run to North Korea?
If that is a pre-desertion charge he was being sent back stateside to face, that definitely helps explain why going over to the Norks seemed like a rational thing to do.
I know very well about the difference between prison types. And I’m sorry, but I have not the slightest sympathy for child porn or those who view it.