The military is only place in America where you do not get a jury of your peers.
This speaks volumes on how the military protects the officers and sends the enlisted to the brig. The 1-star is demoted to Col and allowed to retire with FULL benefits. At 24 years, (I don't know for sure, but I'm estimating her time-in-sevice) her base pay is $8,174 and at 60% (which is what you get at 24 years), that comes out to $4,904 per month along with annual COLA increases. Meanwhile, the PFC will be in jail.
Bull Pucky! Enlisted members can choose to have enlisted members on their panel if they so desire. Generally they don't because the enlisted members will generally be harder on them than officers would be. They don't get to have all enlisted however, but as I said, they probably would rarely choose that option.
If The officers can be proved to have committed similar crimes, as opposed to just not being in control as they should have been, IOW not doing their job properly, they'll get the same treatment. If the general, or any other officer, ordered the crimes to be committed, and thus were part of the crime, they would be tried and convicted, and probably get a harsher sentence. As it is often is, their "crime" wouldn't even be a crime if not for their command responsibilities.
The colonel was a reservist. She's probably got more years of service than you think. (She certainly looks older than 48 or so, which is what she would be if she'd been commisioned at 24 and served 24 years). However she also only gets a fraction of what her rank and years of service would entitle her too if she had been active duty. And she doesn't start collecting it until, IIRC, she's 65 years old, not upon retirement like active duty folks. The fraction is determined by the average number of points she accrued. Reservists, including National Guard, get two points per day (one per 4 hour "drill") of inactive duty and one for each day of active duty. Plus points can be accrued by taking correspondence courses (and probably on-line ones now). For a unit reservist (there are other types who typically serve less time each year) that means 24 days or 48 points of inactive duty and about 14 or 15 days of active duty each year. That's 63 points, plus they get an additional 15 points for each "good year" they serve. That's 78 points, so call it 100 for the hyper participation that gets one to General in the first place. So she gets 100/365 or less than 1/3 of what an active duty retiree would get. She also doesn't get the health care benifits until she's 65.
85 posts before someone nailed it. Don't forget the other eight enlisted that were convicted earlier. No officers convicted! This stinks!
Does anyone have a problem with that? The PFC did the dirty deed and should be the one who gets punished. The officer had nothing to do with it but didn't provide sufficient leadership and got demoted. Looks about right to me.
Jury of your peers? Are you saying the jury should consist of enlisted men only and no officers because it's a PFC on trial? That's nuts. Your comments sound like class mongering BS.