I have a character that deserts her post and gets arrested two years later for unrelated crimes. Would the crime of desertion take precedence? Would police hand her over to military police? What kind of punishment would she be facing?
A complicated question tbh. My apologies for taking a while to answer it; I had to do some heavy reading through UCMJ - The Uniform Code of Military Justice. You’re specifically looking for the article regarding going AWOL - being absent from a place of duty without authorized leave. I THINK this is the one bit that applies to your character specifically:
(e) Apprehension by civilian authorities with-out prior military request. When an absentee is in the hands of civilian authorities for other reasons and these authorities make the absentee available for return to military control, the absence is terminated when the military authorities are informed of the absentee’s availability.These are the different circumstances under which your soldier abandoned her post:(1) Failing to go to, or going from, the appointed place of duty. Confinement for 1 month and forfeiture of two-thirds pay per month for 1 month.(2) Absence from unit, organization, or other place of duty:(a) For not more than 3 days. Confinement for 1 month and forfeiture of two-thirds pay per month for 1 month.
(b) For more than 3 days but not more than 30 days. Confinement for 6 months and forfeiture of two-thirds pay per month for 6months.(c) For more than 30 days. Dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 1 year.(d) For more than 30 days and terminated by apprehension. Dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 18 months.(3) From guard or watch. Confinement for 3 months and forfeiture of two-thirds pay per month for 3 months.(4) From guard or watch with intent to abandon. Bad-conduct discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 6 months.(5) With intent to avoid maneuvers or field exercises. Bad-conduct discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 6 months.It is completely possible for a soldier to go AWOL and receive little to no punishment, especially depending on intent. While I can’t list every possibility, I do know that the army does take into account WHY your soldier went AWOL. Like during training, the army sometimes gets AWOL recruits back and is just like “look, you wanna get out? Fine. Here’s your paperwork, get out.” It gets more serious if the soldier abandoned an actual guard or if they were deployed or if they were for example supposed to embark on a ship and they missed it.So on the books, UCMJ states that an absence of 30 days or more is enough to get you jail time for a year, a DD, and no pay. But it does also depends whether your AWOL was terminated by apprehension, meaning essentially that you got caught and didn’t turn yourself in. It’s a little easier on a soldier to just turn themselves in if AWOL. Depending on the unrelated crimes, the civilian police might turn her over to the MPs. From my understanding it appears that this is more likely to happen for less serious crimes, whereas harder crimes would be tried first. If the soldier is convicted in a civilian court, they automatically receive a discharge, likely dishonorable but possibly other-than-honorable, which isn’t much better. If the crime occurs on a military installation, again depending on what it is but the odds are they’d see military police for it. There was actually a case in Hawaii you might find of interest. The soldier went AWOL but was then picked up by civilian authorities for theft, imo not a particularly hard crime. Upon learning he was AWOL military, the civilians confined him until he posted bail, whereupon he was immediately picked up by the Coast Guard. His case was controversial because he was picked up by civilian authorities first and he told them he was an AWOL service member, which then resulted in him being picked up by his unit. The argument was that he was apprehended by authorities which effectively ended his absence, (termination by apprehension) but because he wasn’t apprehended by military authorities people figured there was some kind of loop hole there where he technically turned himself because his confession led to his unit finding him but not really. A weird case.
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