Pentagon wonders: Should we prosecute troops who attempt suicide?
“If suicide is indeed the worst enemy the armed forces have,” Senior Judge Walter T. Cox III said, “then why should we criminalize it when it fails?”
For 40 minutes Tuesday morning, Cox and the four other members of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces sounded deeply ambivalent about the complexities involved in prosecuting members of the military who try to kill themselves. While several judges sounded skeptical about the government’s claim that Caldwell’s actions brought discredit to the Marine Corps, judges also sounded hesitant about ruling out prosecution altogether.
“I question whether it’s up to us to say that under no circumstance can someone be prosecuted,” Judge Scott W. Stucky said. “Isn’t that up to Congress?”
Congress and the White House might, in fact, get into the act.
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Death sentence?
Clink on November 28, 2012 at 8:55 AM
Hell no, that’s a personal matter.
Falz on November 28, 2012 at 8:56 AM
obama’s ‘WAR on the U.S. Military’ marches on. Is it any wonder that obama’s cabal worked so hard to prevent out troops from voting and to prevent military votes from being counted?
Pork-Chop on November 28, 2012 at 9:07 AM
Do we prosecute attempted suicides in the civilian world? No.
We used to joke about someone being charged with “destruction of government property” when someone would beat another airman up. This is the mindset of our top military “leaders”. Idiots.
Mitoch55 on November 28, 2012 at 9:07 AM
Destroying Government Property has always been a crime.
BigSven on November 28, 2012 at 9:08 AM
No. It would be a pr nightmare for one.
Blake on November 28, 2012 at 9:10 AM
Nothing says “I’ve got you back” like threatening a suicidal person with prosecution.
Flange on November 28, 2012 at 9:10 AM
Hopefully Obama doesn’t try to simplify the issue by hitting them with drone strikes.
forest on November 28, 2012 at 9:16 AM
Some ideas are so stupid they can only be taken seriously by
academicsgovernment employees…JohnGalt23 on November 28, 2012 at 9:17 AM
True story: I was stationed at an Air Force base where the family accommodations were famously bad and there was an ongoing problem with married senior NCOs (which is most of them) retiring rather than accepting reassignment to it. Someone mentioned the problem to the Wing Commander, who dismissively said “We don’t need those weak sisters.”
That’s the real level of concern senior officers have for the troops.
PersonFromPorlock on November 28, 2012 at 9:24 AM
In units I’ve been in and one that we ripped with, I know three soldiers personally who took their lives during the GWOT deployments. The one from another unit (101st) had actually been a soldier in our unit at one time also.
One soldier was a model troop in garrison at Ft. Bragg. 07 was his first deployment. After deploying, his co-workers and roommate started complaining that he had quit taking care of himself. Unkempt, unclean portion of his quarters and literally stopped personal hygiene. Bad breath. But he worked like a madman in his job in the motor pool. Rather than IDing the warning signs of pre-suicide demeanor, he was counseled by an NCO that he was pretty close to, to improve his personal care. He was ordered to take a morning of work and clean his billet, clean himself and then make an appointment for a dentist at Craig Hospital. He went to his quarters. Cleaned it. And then shot himself in the head with his M16.
A LT keep it hidden to himself that he was married to a shrew who just tormented him unmercifully when they talked on the telephone. She threatened to leave him while he was deployed and that he would never see their kid again, etc. He confided in a superior about his marriage and stated it was causing him a good deal of mental fatigue. The commands remedy was to take him from an administrative job at brigade and let him work at the aid station. He had expressed a desire to change his career field and they thought that would get his mind channeled from his strife at home. He assisted an NCO working on me as a matter of fact after a mission. After a single telephone call to his wife that lasted less than ten minutes he left the aid station one morning, went to his room and shot himself in the head with his pistol. That was just three weeks into his move into the new job.
The last soldier from the 101st had been a crew chief in my unit about a year and a half prior to my last deployment. When they arrived and started the RIP process with us, I was surprised to see him even still on active duty. He had moved within unit commands at Ft. Bragg due to carrying on with an officers wife in our MED Unit. His plan was to just try to get out of the military. I’m not sure how he ended up in the 101st a year and a half later, but it was apparent when I greeted him in our Operations Office for a briefing with all of their CEs and Door Gunners, that he was troubled. Long story short, he told me he squared his personal life away at home and just asked to not be deployed this time. I asked his superiors about him and they said the same. That they were watching him and trying to come to a decision about sending him home. We left at about the time he was told he was going home and they took his weapon until it could be arranged. I suppose that wasn’t quick enough becasue he took his roommates firearm, drove one of their flight companies SUVs to the North side of the perimeter road and shot himself in the drivers seat.
None of these soldiers were worried about being procecuted.
hawkdriver on November 28, 2012 at 9:26 AM
I bet that Commander would be appalled at the idea of having his budget cut even though those “weak sisters” aren’t needed.
Flange on November 28, 2012 at 9:28 AM
Uh, no. You chapter them out and try to get them some treatment. And continue to work on making sure that people signal out the tells – because very few people just up and try to off themselves (or commit mass murder like Hassan).
This is stupid on every level.
CorporatePiggy on November 28, 2012 at 9:38 AM
I wouldn’t say the army doesn’t care. The Army does provide psychological counseling/treatment and they have increased the number of personal doing this.
Blake on November 28, 2012 at 9:44 AM
Seems like the person attempting suicide may have suffered enough. What can you punish him with that is worse than ending one’s life? Get real.
Herb on November 28, 2012 at 9:45 AM
A suicide may well represent a failure of the chain of command. Instead of blaming the service member, perhaps the whole chain should be court martialed for failure to do their jobs.
Let them prove before a tribunal that they didn’t have their heads up their fannies.
Abelard on November 28, 2012 at 9:51 AM
Only if you want to drive them straight into the arms of a second attempt.
dczombie on November 28, 2012 at 9:53 AM
This has been said by several people about the Ft. Hood. shooting.
The Major was promoted despite poor performance, was markedly anti-social, gave a pro-jihad lecture at a psychology conference, etc. And he had told people he would not fight fellow Muslims. After the event, fellow soldiers said he definitely vibed hinky but they didn’t want to bring it up for fear of being labelled racist.
It appears there were a ton of missed signs but don’t expect to see anyone else court martialled for that unfortunate piece of workplace violence.
CorporatePiggy on November 28, 2012 at 10:01 AM
There is a fine line we have walked trying to maintain discipline and at the same time be wary of soldiers under extreme duress during the war. I can tell you that particular NCO could not have been punished any worse than what he is living with until this day.
He has a story too. He was responsible for maintaining an entire brigade of rolling stock that operated outside the compound. He was also under great pressure to support the ground unit assigned to our aviation brigade with dependable vehicle that squared off frequently with Taliban and HIG ambushes and IEDs. In his own way he preserved more lives than he can begin to understand and yet he lives with a soldiers suicide under his belt.
I have not worked with callous commands that would look at the chance of any of these men doing this as some calulated risk they would take to keep people in theater to support the mission. It is just harder than you can ever imagine to observe the daily emotional grind of men and women deployed and ID one and say, oh yeah, him.
hawkdriver on November 28, 2012 at 10:07 AM
BTW, the dead in Bagram and Kandahar had honors the entire camps would render. In Bagram, almost everything stopped and active duty, contractors and even some of the local civilians who worked on post would go and stand on Disney Drive. When the soldiers remains left the morgue they’d be transported down Disney to the ramp where it would be put on a plane to return home. Both sides of the street would come to attention and salute as the vehicle went by. On Kandahar, it was the ramp itself.
These ceremonies were never held for soldiers who had committed suicide. They couldn’t.
hawkdriver on November 28, 2012 at 10:13 AM
Having been in both during war and before, suicide is taken very seriously.
The peacetime suicides I know of, the leadership was dismissed from service, from the squad leader, to the Battalion Commander.
.
The reason to prosecute it to prevent others who may be teetering from doing the same, and so that the military can remove the person from the situation and the service. Brutal, but we just don’t have the people or the ability to deal with every soldier’s personal problems.
Besides (as in one case I encountered) what do you do with a guy who tried to kill himself during lunch in the middle of the busiest road on post because his transvestite stripper girlfriend has dumped him?
LincolntheHun on November 28, 2012 at 11:26 AM