Posted on 01/12/2006 1:38:29 PM PST by A.A. Cunningham
Marines Release Man Charged with Desertion
(01/11/06 -- RALEIGH) - A 65-year-old Florida man jailed since August on a charge that he deserted the Marine Corps during the Vietnam war has been released and will be discharged, the military said Wednesday.
Jerry Texiero was released from the Camp Lejeune brig at 2:48 p.m., said base spokesman 1st Lt. Clark D. Carpenter.
Texiero formally asked the base commander last week to discharge him from the Marine Corps.
"His discharge request was approved and he is currently pending formal release from the Marine Corps," Carpenter said. "It's just a matter of administrative work."
Texiero's fiance, Elaine Smith of Tarpon Springs, Fla., said she was driving to North Carolina to see him and "whenever he gets his paperwork done and has a physical, then that boy is going home. We are just so happy."
Base commander Maj. Gen. Bob Dickerson granted the discharge in lieu of a trial, said Smith, who declined to provide more specific information.
Texiero couldn't be immediately reached by telephone, but Smith said he told her he would stay on the base until the discharge was complete and then return to Florida.
Last week, Texiero's civilian lawyers said he was charged solely to serve as an example to troops in Iraq, but the accusation was rejected by a corps spokeswoman who said Marines were only following the law.
Texiero was charged with deserting Camp Pendleton, Calif., in 1965. The Corps has held him at Camp Lejeune since Dec. 14, after being transferred from the Florida jail where he had been since his arrest in August.
Texiero had been using the alias Gerome J. Conti for years, but the Corps found him by matching fingerprint records against names of suspected deserters. At the time, he was serving a 20-year probation sentence after pleading no contest to charges that he defrauded the owners of classic cars he sold in the mid-1990s. Ensign said the fraud charge was the result of a business dispute.
Texiero could have received amnesty after Vietnam had he known to ask for it, said his lawyers, who defended his decision to leave the ranks as a right bestowed by military rules.
In fiscal year 2005, there were 1,187 Marines listed as unlawfully leaving the ranks, down from 1,436 a year earlier, the military said. The oldest entry dates to 1943 for a Marine who would be 91 if he's still alive.
That would be sufficient.
I wonder who they sent in his place? And if his replacement died in battle?
Trying to figure what account to charge for back pay, and what automatic promotions would have to be factored in.
Why would they need such an example? Last I heard the draft ended 30 years ago and AFAIK there were only two deserters since the Iraq war started. I should think due process would be reason enough to charge him.
Hope the Marines charge Murtha with desertion. Isn't it, "Once a Marine, always a Marine?" Definately looks like desertion to me!
There have been a lot more than two. A "deserter" is someone AWOL or UA from their appointed place for duty for more than 30 days. Happens all the time, for a variety of reasons.
When people hear the word "deserter," they automatically assume it's someone who snuck away from a battlefield or something. In truth, it's anyone who leaves for a month or more, usually due to some sort of personal, mental, or family problem.
If you mean "deserter" in the commonly-used civilian sense of being a person who shirks his duty to fight, then I would say yes, the numbers of those have been quite small.
- ThreeTracks
If we're talking about the Carter amnesty, how did he not know? That was a pretty big story at the time. As to the second part of that...
:-D )))
Or 24 hours depending on security clearance.
An article about this was posted the other day and I had mentioned Carter's amnesty plan in a post but then the article also mentioned he was charged with theft from an exchange on base and that's why he fled. So I didn't think that it applied to him because then it would seem he didn't flee to get out of fighting, he fled to get away from the charges of stealing. But then again the burden of proof on that would have been up to him and his lawyer.
That is technically correct but deserters are rarely charged with it because it is a capital offense and administratively much more complicated to prosecute. I spent my last few months after Vietnam working at the stockade at Ft Riley Kansas processing GIs for bad discharges. We had guys who had been gone for years in a some cases. All the deserter had to say that was that he intended to come back and they would change it to AWOL and give him an Undesirable Discharge.
Yeah, this guy sounds like a real gem.
Indeed.
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