Being a civilian without military experience, having people with serious felony convictions against them in the armed forces doesn’t seem like a good idea. At least on the face of it. I’ll accept the judgement of someone with experience, though.
Being that we are 50 States with more than 3000 Counties, one needs to recognize that the law, and it’s penalties, are not the same or evenly applied throughout the Country.
What might be a Felony is Georgia, for example, might only be a misdemeanor in California. And vice versa. A good example would be the Genarlow Wilson case. Convicted of a felony and sent to prison for having consensual sex with a minor (15), and he was also a minor (17) at the time. And there are many, many examples of this.
(the real kicker in the Wilson case is he only had oral sex with her, if he had intercourse, it would have been a misdemeanor. Instead he was convicted of aggravated child molestation and that carried a mandatory sentence OF TEN YEARS.)
I have no problem with allowing convicts to help protect us, as long as they have been vetted.