She had a history of insubordination; refusal to obey orders including refusing to report for duty as assigned* and refusal to wear a proper uniform while on duty as ordered (allegedly over a back injury that she claimed making her wear a C (Charlie) uniform too uncomfortable, that she had a chit exempting her from wearing one but the chit didn’t make any such an exception and this was confirmed by the medical officer) and on numerous occasions she showed open disrespect and hostility toward her commanding officers and toward her fellow Marines which caused a breakdown of military order and morale, so the court martial was over more than the posting of the Bible verses on the computer workstation - BTW in 3 different places and on a workstation that she shared with other Marines.
And the verse she posted was “No weapon formed against you shall prosper” except she changed it to “No weapon formed against me shall prosper” and by her own admission during her court martial, was something she posted because she thought people were picking on her. Sterling told military officials that the posted passage helped her summon patience when dealing with short-tempered Marines who were frustrated with their CAC problems (her desk job was handling complaints from other Marines experiencing issues with their Common Access Cards). It was deemed to be more of an expression of hostility rather than an expression of religious faith. Furthermore, when her CO ordered her to remove the signs she refused, and when he took them down, she put them back up, but she did not go through proper channels (up the chain of command) for objecting to the CO’s order – she simply refused to obey them.
Here is the court martial doc:
http://www.jag.navy.mil/courts/documents/archive/2015/STERLING-201400150-UNPUB.PDF
* Failing to go to an appointed pace of duty is a general intent crime. Therefore, any mistake of fact must be both honest and reasonable While the appellant may have offered some evidence at trial that she honestly believed that DE A’s recommended limitations exempted her from standing duty, the evidence indicating that this belief was unreasonable was substantial. To begin with, the plain language of DE A makes it clear that the limitations are “recommendations.” While we recognize that medically-recommended duty limitations are routinely adopted by commanders, there is no evidence in the record to support a reasonable belief that these recommendations were “orders.” Moreover, the appellant conceded that her inability to stand duty would have been caused by her taking a medication as a proactive measure to prevent the onset of migraines. The appellant introduced evidence that the medication could produce side effects including dizziness, drowsiness, “alert issues,” and numbness in hands, feet, and tongue, and was therefore prescribed to be taken at night. However, while admitting that she normally took the medication as prescribed, the appellant insisted that she had to take the medication hours earlier on 15 September 2013 because she would be attending church services, which she believed could trigger a migraine. Therefore, because she planned to take the medication by the time her appointed duty would have commenced, she concluded that she could not report to her appointed place of duty.
So she admitted to not taking her migraine medication as proscribed and used that as an excuse not to report to duty as ordered.
She had no grounds to appeal the other refusal to obey orders charges on which she was convicted so she played the “Persecuted Christian Card” over the Bible (or more accurately the “Don’t Pick On Me”) verse. I’m guessing that her CO was perhaps Black so she couldn’t pull the “Black Card”.
She was simply not Marine Corps material and it was IMO a good thing that she got booted. But with her attitude problems, she may well have a future working at the DMV. Have fun renewing your driver’s license or registration.
Thank you.