Category: crime & punishment

It might help to track this guy down if a picture of what he looked like was available:

A U.S. soldier under military investigation has disappeared from a base near the border with North Korea, a spokesman said Thursday.

The missing soldier is being investigated for a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, said Lt. Col. Richard Hyde, a 2nd Infantry Division spokesman. South Korean police said the soldier had been scheduled to face a court-martial Wednesday, but the military declined to confirm that or provide details about the charges.

The soldier, who is in his 20s, is not wanted for a violent crime, Hyde said.

“We do not believe that he is armed or dangerous,” he said. “He is believed to be in Seoul.”  [Stars & Stripes]

There is a lot to discuss in this article to include the fact that the SHARP training after all these years has been wrong:

How drunk is too drunk to consent to sex?

According to military training aimed at preventing sexual harassment and assault, the answer has been: barely tipsy.

For years, Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention training informed troops that even one drink made a person incapable of giving consent.

In legal terms, that wasn’t true.

The issue has been at the heart of many cases in military courtrooms over the past decade. How many drinks an alleged victim consumed and how much alcohol rendered him or her “incapable of consenting” is frequently disputed at trial.

Now, for the first time, a military court decision has defined the term “incapable of consenting” while overturning a sailor’s conviction for sexually assaulting two subordinates under the influence of “significant amounts of alcohol.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces agreed in a March decision that a person is incapable of consenting when he or she lacks “the cognitive ability to appreciate the sexual conduct in question or the physical or mental ability to make or to communicate a decision about whether they agree to the conduct.” In rendering its decision, the court upheld a 2015 decision by the Navy-Marine appellate court.  [Stars & Stripes]

I read the bold text to mean that if someone is able to communicate that they want to have sex that this is consent regardless of whether they were drinking.  Because of this definition the sailor convicted of sexual assault in the article for having a drunken twosome was released from prison after serving 21 months of a six year sentence.  He left the Navy with an honorable discharge earlier this month.

Here is how the head of a major sexual assault advocacy group has responded to this change:

“There’s that common sense part of it,” he said. “What if you were trying to do a business transaction (with a drunken person)? You’re taking advantage of that guy. He doesn’t understand the intricacies.”

So what if the accused was drinking?  Isn’t the accused decision making ability altered as well?  How is it just the accuser’s ability to make decisions is hampered by alcohol and not the accused?  Anyway I agree with what this lawyer had to say to wrap up the article:

Jack Zimmermann, a Houston military appellate lawyer, said he doubted the case would have a significant effect.

“In reality, it’s going to be very similar to the way it’s been: You look at the words and actions of the people involved,” he said. “The bottom line in these sexual assault cases is that they are going to be won or lost in the courtroom when the complaining witness testifies and the jury believes her or not.”

Even with this new definition I suspect that cases with weak evidence will still get sent to court martial where juries will be left with the difficult job of figuring out the truth of what happened based off of drunken memories.

Here is another story of a senior military leader in big trouble.  This time Colonel David Cockrum the former commander of the 51st Medical Group on Osan Airbase was charged with sexually assaulting two male servicemembers, but was found not guilty of those charges, but was instead found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer for fraternizing with the male servicemembers:

An Air Force colonel with nearly 20 years of service was found not guilty of sexual assault during his court-martial last week.

Col. David Cockrum, former commander of the 51st Medical Group at Osan Air Base, South Korea, was found not guilty of two specifications of sexual assault and one specification of abusive sexual contact in violation of Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Pacific Air Forces spokesman Col. David Honchul told Air Force Times on Tuesday.

Cockrum was found guilty of one charge of conduct unbecoming an officer. According to court documents, he faced that charge because he did “knowingly fraternize with enlisted persons, on terms of military equality  … such conduct being to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces,” between July 2014 and March 2015.

The military judge sentenced him to 30 days confinement, forfeiture of $5,000 pay per month for eight months ($40,000 total), and a reprimand, Honchul said.  [Air Force Times]

You can read more at the link.

Over the past two months two US military colonels have found themselves facing a number of serious charges to include sexual assault.  The first one Colonel Shane Tomko has already found himself in jail for violating a pretrial agreement:

A Marine officer facing a general court-martial over allegations of sexual assault has been sent to a county jail for violating the terms of his pretrial agreement.

Col. T. Shane “Rhino” Tomko, the former commander of the Marine Corps’ Wounded Warrior Regiment, was sent to the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Virginia, on May 6, said Rex Runyon, a Marine Corps spokesman. Tomko is in the process of being transferred to the U.S. Navy brig in Chesapeake, Virginia, he added.  (………)

Tomko faces charges of abusive sexual contact, fraternization, conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, wrongful possession of anabolic steroids, obstructing justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice and violations of lawful orders, according to the charge sheet against him.  [Marine Corps Times]

According to Marine Corps Life he forcibly kissed a female Marine on the mouth and supposedly said that she was “a hot and intriguing dyke that makes me wish I were a woman.”

Then over in Colorado there is an Air Force colonel who seems to be quite the ladies man when he isn’t being accused of sexual assault:

The former vice commander of the 50th Space Wing, charged with rape, assault, adultery and other lewd acts, will head to a general court-martial in August, according to the 21st Space Wing at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.

Col. Eugene Marcus Caughey, currently assigned to Air Force Space Command at Peterson, was charged Dec.10 with rape and assault at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, after in late 2014 or early 2015 he allegedly used “unlawful force” to hold the victim “against the wall and floor” while committing a sexual act, charge sheet documents reveal. He was also charged with various acts of alleged misconduct — which includes taking photos of his genitals while in uniform — dating back to 2013, according to his charge sheet.  [Air Force Times]

You can read more at the link, but this guy supposedly had six different girlfriends while being married and his defense is that they are spurned lovers.

These two colonels are of course innocent until proven guilty, but regardless they are quite the embarrassment for the US military.

This has to horrible news to the residents of this apartment who have been using the tap water contaminated with a decomposed corpse:

A body was found in a water tank on the roof of an apartment block in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, local daily Kyunghyang Shinmun reported Tuesday.

Management staff at the apartments in Gongdan-dong found the body of a 38-year-old Chinese at 1:30 p.m. Monday after a resident complained that the tap water had a bad smell.

“The body had no particular injuries,” police said. “The Chinese is presumed to have been dead for two weeks.”

Police are investigating and an autopsy will be held Wednesday.

Gumi City has provided bottles of mineral water to apartment residents as an emergency measure. [Korea Times]

It looks like this so called Kenyan refugee will be having an extended stay in Korea after committing this brutal murder of a PC bang employee:

An African man who has applied for refugee status killed an employee at a PC cafe in Gwangju on Wednesday, and then robbed a customer.

The man, 28, a Kenyan, whose name has not been released, went to the cafe in South Jeolla Province in the morning. He chatted with an employee, a Korean man, 38.

The otherwise empty cafe’s security camera showed the two chatting briefly before going to a washroom in the basement.

The camera then shows the Kenyan returning to the cafe alone.

The man then robbed a male customer, 22, stealing his winter jacket and smartphone, and then fled. The customer reported the theft to police, who later arrested the Kenyan.

Police found the cafe employee dead in the washroom, with a chopstick and spoon jammed in his mouth. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This is a pretty brutal murder that happened recently in Gwangju where two siblings upset with their father decided to brutally kill him with a screwdriver and knife:

A recent case of parricide in Gwangju, in which a brother and sister allegedly stabbed their father in the heart and neck, has received more than the usual amount of media attention this week because of the day the siblings chose.

A 47-year-old woman and her 43-year-old brother were arrested for allegedly killing their father on Sunday, when the rest of the nation was celebrating Parents’ Day. The victim was 76.

Gwangju police say the siblings have admitted to killing their father on Sunday, but they don’t believe their professed reason.

The suspects have asserted under questioning that they have been deeply upset with their father over the past two decades because of his ill treatment of their mother, who passed away in 2011 after years of suffering from mental and physical illnesses.

The mother was disabled in a car accident in the 1990s and suffered from dementia before she died, the police quoted the siblings as saying.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link as well as over at the Korea Herald.

This is horrible way to lose a son, to a toxic humidifier:

A South Korean father who claims to have lost his son to a harmful Oxy Reckitt Benckiser humidifier sterilizer said Saturday he will file a compensation suit against the British company later this month.

Kim Deok-jong, 40, said he decided to file the damage suit against the British company after CEO Rakesh Kapoor refused his demand to visit South Korea to make an apology in front of the sterilizer’s victims. His 5-year-old son died in 2009 after battling a respiratory disease.

His legal representative will notify Oxy of his intention to file for a compensation claim next week, a preliminary process needed to proceed with a formal suit.  (………)

A criminal suit will be possible after South Korean prosecutors announce its investigation results, which would provide the legal grounds that Oxy headquarters approved sales of the harmful product in the Korean market.  (…………)

The humidifier disinfectant case, one of the worst scandals involving a consumer product using chemicals, came to light after four pregnant women died of lung problems for unknown reasons in 2011. A government-led investigation confirmed a connection between more than 100 people who died of lung problems and the chemicals used to clean household humidifiers.

The focus of the investigation will be on whether the company’s high-ranking executives approved the sales of its disinfectants while knowing the health risks.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

Three British males are in big trouble after allegedly sexually assaulting two Korean women and then beating up a bystander that tried to intervene in Itaewon:

Apparently 3 British foreigners were sexually harrassing and assaulting 2 girls and a passerby dude stepped in to intervene.

But he ended up being beaten.

Seems like they’re being investigated but released from jail.  [Reddit Korea via KBS and Naver]

You can read more at the link.

A bunch of 2nd Infantry Division soldiers have apparently made themselves eligible for Army downsizing after being punished for the brawl they were part of at the UN Club in Itaewon:

The Army has punished nine soldiers for a brawl in Seoul’s Itaewon entertainment district, a 2nd Infantry Division spokesman said Tuesday.

 

Video that has been circulating on social media since shortly after the January fight shows a group of foreigners brawling in the street in front of the UN Club, a nightspot popular with U.S. troops that’s a few minutes’ walk from Yongsan Garrison, headquarters of 8th Army and U.S. Forces Korea.

 

The brawl involved both men and women trading punches and wrestling on the ground, oblivious to the efforts of a lone, bespectacled South Korean police officer to bring the situation under control with a glowing-red traffic wand.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but here is the Youtube video of the brawl, what disgrace:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEtOGx1PDSc