Posted on 05/12/2005 1:05:02 PM PDT by SmithL
SAN DIEGO - A military judge ordered a Navy sailor on Thursday to complete three months of hard labor for refusing to deploy with his ship as a protest against the war in Iraq, but he declined prosecutors' requests for time in custody.
Lt. Cmdr. Bob Klant also reduced Pablo Paredes' rank from petty officer third class to seaman recruit, the lowest in the Navy.
Klant's sentencing came a day after he found Paredes guilty of one count of missing his ship's movement when he refused to board the USS Bonhomme Richard as it deployed to the Persian Gulf in December.
Paredes, a 23-year-old from the New York City borough of the Bronx, said he refused to support a war he believes is illegal and immoral. He has since become an outspoken anti-war activist.
Prosecutors had asked Klant to sentence Paredes to nine months in confinement, three months less than the possible maximum.
The sentence of hard labor normally involves extra duty. For two of the three months, Paredes also will restricted to his naval base.
Paredes showed no emotion as the judge delivered the sentence.
He and prosecutors left the courtroom without making any statements.
Paredes' lawyer, Jeremy Warren, called the judge's lesser sentence "a stunning blow to the prosecution."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Tell the troops ping.
shave his ***** with a rusty razor ...oh, never mind.
What's the average Joe get for this kind of infraction?
Yeah, but I'd be willing to bet that at some point "retribution" will be meted out and he'll wish he'd kept his mouth shut and done his duty!
Castrate the swine, then give him a BCD!!
That would only result in another sailor getting punished under the UCMJ. Not scum like this is worth losing your career over. Nope. He should have been jailed. He should have got the BCD. He did not want to deploy. He did not want to fight. So, give the @$$hole what he wanted, out of the Navy. Jail and a BCD would have been fine. I have seen soldiers get a BCD just for AWOL over 30 days. This guy missed movement to an overseas war zone. Jail and then the nail.
If Marines are still running USN brigs, he's already had some retribution. After doing his hard labor, CNN will probably hire him as a military analyst.
Wasn't Private Eddie Slovic executed for doing this same thing during WWII?
I cannot believe this is all this clown got. I don't know what all he was charged with, but at the very least he should have been charged with: Missing Movement, Disobedience of a Lawfull Order, Deriliction of Duty, and Conduct Unbecoming.
Had he been a Marine he would be in the Camp Pendleton Brig for a long time, making little rocks out of big ones!!!
It's not like the guy would be going house to house looking for terrorists or risking his ass traveling over roads with possible IED's. The guy's a loser.
I'm hoping he pulls the same crap again. We'll see how committed he is. Eventually he'll get a BCD. That will impress future employers.
What does hard labor entail these days?
What is this Bone-head doing in my Navy?
Hold on. He still must serve the remained of his enlistment (as much as six years) as an E-1 leper. He'll spend these years on his hands and knees, pumping sewage and scraping every bilge aboard every ship in port. The pay for E-1 is $ 1,235/month, or, based upon the Navy 12 hour day, 6 days a week, about $ 4/hour. And he'll almost certainly get a General Discharge Under Other than Honorable Conditions. Wait til he tries to get his first civilian job...
This is true. Even if he only has one year left on his enlistment, he isn't getting paid half of what he was getting paid (not to mention the loss of sea pay, and other benefits he may have), he will have the worst job in the Navy, working for a crusty BM1 or BMC that has nothing better to do with their time than to make his life miserable. I hope that after his hard labor, they send him to the worst possible place to serve, maybe on the Kitty Hawk scraping polishing the anchor just so they can drop it in the water and get it all nice and corroded again.
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