Category: crime & punishment

The Stars and Stripes has the latest on a drunk GI in Itaewon and a taxi cab related incident.  Nomad has more.

I have never seen a brigade Command Sergeant Major get in this much trouble before.  If I had the chance to ask him one question it would be where he planned to flee to from the CID agents pursuing him in Balad, Iraq?

Another MP this time a sergeant is convicted of a crime:

A court-martial jury found an Army sergeant guilty Friday of indecently assaulting a private earlier this year on Camp Casey.

The nine-member jury found Sgt. Anthony Medellin Jr. guilty of the indecent assault and two specifications each of maltreatment and disobeying orders, but cleared him of two additional specifications of maltreatment.

The jury sentenced Medellin to reduction in rank to E-2; three months hard labor without confinement; two months restriction to his barracks, dining facility or place of worship; and forfeiture of all pay and allowances for two months.

This sergeant ended being another convicted criminal that ended up having time reduced from his sentence due to the chain of command imposing pre-trial punishment on the sergeant:

But because military judge Col. Gregory Gross credited Medellin with 34 days credit for time served for pre-trial punishment he received, officials said there would be some reduction in his sentence. <…>

Medellin testified that when he was moved from Camp Casey’s 55th Military Police Company to the 94th MP Company at Yongsan after he was accused of the assault, there was no room ready for him in the barracks, and he was forced to spend the night sleeping in his uniform at a desk.

He said he was deprived of his personal property for about two months because it had not been shipped.

He also said he was confined to Yongsan, restricted from drinking and his chain of command made him remove the green leadership tabs from his uniform on the second day of the court-martial.

Gross said there was “no legitimate reason” for Medellin to have received the punishments and reduced his sentence 20 days for being deprived of his property, 10 days for being restricted from drinking, one day for sleeping at the desk and three days for losing his leadership tabs.

Gross also said Medellin could not be forced to forfeit more than one third of his pay since he was not being confined.

These infractions leading to criminals receiving less punishment is a reoccurring issue I see happening over and over again.  There needs to be some kind of training for commanders and first sergeants to educate them about how to treat soldiers accused of crimes.  Bottom line is that soldiers and innocent until proven guilty and deserve to be treated that way.

I suspected that something was up with this case when it took so long to file charges and now I know why:

A South Korean policewoman told court officials Tuesday that she remembers being attacked by one American soldier, but she doesn’t know whether the second soldier on trial for attempted rape was in the room during the incident.

Pfc. Mark Feldmann has testified he was outside trying to catch a taxi when his friend, Sgt. Anthony Q. Basel, tried to rape the off-duty policewoman in April.

Here is what I also found interesting in the article:

Restaurant owner Cho Sung-Hwan, who found Basel trying to rape the woman, said he knows two men were in the bathroom but he couldn’t remember where the second man was standing because he was stunned and embarrassed by the incident.

Cho said he heard the woman’s screams from his first-floor restaurant and he tried to open the locked bathroom door, which was normally unlocked. He ran down five or six stairs to his restaurant, grabbed the key, then ran back to the restroom and unlocked the door. He saw Basel on top of the woman, then ran back and asked one of his customers for help.

As they went back to the bathroom, Cho said, two foreign men passed them on the stairway.

He called police and reported that two men had left. The next day, Cho told investigators that there was one man in the bathroom. A day or two later, he told them he saw a second man in the bathroom.

The police must have knew they had a weak case against Feldmann and needed the extra time before arresting the two soldiers in order to gather evidence against him and conveniently enough the restaurant owner changes his story and says there was two GIs in the restroom.  It is times like this where it is useful to recall the words of Korea based American lawyer Brendon Carr:

Beyond language difficulties is the prospect that South Koreans who give testimony might feel it culturally acceptable to lie, especially if it will increase their chances of winning bigger damages, Carr said.

"This culture," Carr said, "does not place the same value on truth or view the truth through the same prism that Americans do. There is very little social disapproval of making false official statements in order to achieve an objective for your friend or relative or for a tribemate."

"Once it breaks down to those Americans" versus us Koreans, many, many Koreans will perceive it as their duty to make sure that the Korean is the winner of the dispute. So there a lot of lying when witnesses come forward, Carr said.

This SGT Basel is a real dirt bag and will hopefully serve a long time in a Korean prison and PFC Feldmann is probably no saint himself, but I think he definitely has a legitimate case that he was not in the restroom.  It really doesn’t matter because he will be convicted of something because GIs always get convicted.  Korean courts aren’t about determining the truth and rendering justice, they are about validating perceptions and appeasing public sentiment.  The public sentiment says that Feldman is a GI bastard that needs to go to jail, thus he doesn’t stand a chance.  Just ask PFC Acosta.

I guess this helps explain the increase in the USFK drug abuse numbers:

Three illegal foreign nationals tried to sell methamphetamine to an undercover Army investigator and were arrested by South Korean police in Dongducheon last week, officials said Tuesday.

A Criminal Investigation Command special agent posed as a U.S. servicemember a few blocks from Camp Casey’s main gate during a June 19 joint sting operation with local police, a Yangju police official said Tuesday.

The investigator offered to buy a half-gram of methamphetamine for $500 from the three women in the Bosandong bar district known as “The Ville.”

They arrested three Philippines nationals, ages 21, 28 and 31, whose names were not immediately available. Each of the women was in the country illegally and has no relation to U.S. Forces Korea, officials said.  [Stars & Stripes]

The juicies in TDC have been taking drugs for years so the fact they are selling them isn’t surprising.  The fact they were in the country illegally as well isn’t surprising either.  You can read more over at Nomad.

The two USFK dependents involved in last April’s taxi cab knifing incident in Waegwon has gone to trial and the teens deny stabbing the driver:

Both defendants said they had been drinking in Waegwon bars that night and were headed by taxi to the train station so the younger teen could catch a train home.

The driver, Park Sang-hui, took a wrong turn, and when the teens assumed he was trying to cheat them on the fare they told him to stop and got out. When they realized they didn’t have money for the fare, they ran.

Park said he parked the taxi and went looking for the teens on scooter.

The teens said they didn’t realize it was Park who had gotten off a scooter, grabbed Banks by his collar, struck him and said, “Money! Money!” They said they thought they were being robbed.

The younger defendant tried to push Park away from his friend but another South Korean man joined the fray.

Banks said he pulled the knife to defend himself but stressed he never stabbed the man.

First of all I just have to wonder how the heck these two were out at 2AM drinking at bars to begin with?  Secondly, you do not pull out a knife to defend yourself in South Korea.  Pulling out a knife is the equivalent of pulling out a gun in the United States on someone.  How do you think the courts in the US would look at someone who pulled out a gun over a $2.50 taxi fare and accidentally shot the cab driver?

That is how the South Korean court is going to look at this case with the soldier pulling out the knife.  The fact he is denying it despite eyewitness testimony and the fact the cab driver has an eight in gash in his stomach is only going to make things worse for him and hopefully he sees some good jail time for it.

I you want to read another example of what happens when you pull out a knife in Korea I highly recommend everyone read about the “Shinchon Massacre” to really understand how as a foreigner in Korea you have no expectation of self defense.

You can read more about this over at Lost Nomad as well.

Reading the blotter incidents in Stars and Stripes at times can be real comedy, especially when it involves the PATRIOT guys down south:

A Camp Carroll soldier was sentenced Friday to six months in confinement for drunk and disorderly conduct, disobeying an order and destroying government property.

Pvt. Darrell Tyrone of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Air Defense Artillery Regiment, pleaded guilty to all charges except one specification of failure to obey an order. He was found not guilty of that specification.

The charges stemmed from different incidents, according to court testimony.

On April 1, Tyrone “kicked up a ruckus” with Korean National Police during an off-base incident, defense attorney Capt. Patrick Davis told Stars and Stripes. Davis said a military policeman testified earlier in the day that Tyrone had kicked and spat at the Korean police and at some point tried to set his own pants on fire, but that his client said he was too drunk to remember the incident.

Some may remember that 2-1 ADA was the unit that got kicked out of Gwangju because of all the anti-US protests which were helped by idiots committing crimes there such as the infamous Gwangju Gochu-gate Incident.  Two of the people involved in that incident received Article 15 punishment and were not identified in the Stars and Stripes.  I have to wonder if our man in question here Private Tyrone had any involvement in Gwangju Gochu-gate as well because he sure does meet the stupidity qualifications to be involved in something like that.

You can read more about Private Hot Pants over at Lost Nomad.

You have to read this entire article in today’s Stars and Stripes to really appreciate how stupid this criminal is:

On Dec. 18, Dwelly was hanging out with Pfc. Juan Antonio Rivera.

“[Rivera] asked me if I wanted to ‘do’ the Iron Triangle, and I said all right,” Dwelly testified.

Dwelly and Rivera pushed open a door of the Camp Hovey club together. They found two safes and carted them on a dolly to an abandoned barracks.

The next day, they discovered one of the safes was unlocked. Rivera — who officials say will likely be court-martialed as well — bought a tool at the post exchange to bust open the other safe. The two split the $15,000 inside the safes, Dwelly said.

Read the whole thing because this is not even half the story. Stupid criminals are always the easiest to catch. His sob story didn’t seem to work to well either considering he received three and half years in jail.

He did get some time reduced from his sentence due to improper confinement by his command back at Camp Hovey:

Military judge Col. Gregory Gross ruled Thursday that three incidents involving Pvt. Bud L. Dwelly’s command, a criminal investigator and the Camp Humphreys confinement facility were unlawful.

Each action violated Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Gross ruled, and they earned Dwelly 36 extra days’ credit for time served toward the 42-month prison sentence given during his court-martial Thursday.

Those extra 36 days bring Dwelly’s total to 128 days of pre-trial confinement.

Article 13 bars anyone from punishment other than arrest and confinement before a trial; it also prevents punishment any harsher than that required to ensure the person’s presence.

Prior to his transfer to Camp Humphreys facility in March, Dwelly slept on the floor of his Camp Hovey barracks common quarters area without bedding or hygiene products, using pipe insulation as a pillow, according to his testimony.

Capt. Henry Opolot, Dwelly’s commander, testified that he put Dwelly on 24-hour watch in the common area because weapons found in Dwelly’s room “were indicators of future criminal activity.”

Opolot said he also considered the half-Korean soldier a flight risk. He said he did not know that Dwelly hadn’t been sleeping in a cot, had little entertainment and hadn’t been allowed to shower during the first two days of confinement.

I have seen this happen before, but just because someone is suspected of a crime doesn’t mean you can lock them down.  Remember innocent until proven guilty.  The commander can remove pass priviledges which means the soldier can’t leave their installation or even the immediate company area but they still have to access to places like the chow hall, church, clothing sales, etc.  Also you cannot put guards on their doors or have people follow them around everywhere.  This is still considered unlawful confinement.

I always wondered how the juicy girls received their drugs and now I know how:

The wives of two U.S. soldiers told a panel of South Korean judges on Friday that they didn’t try to smuggle methamphetamine into the country by mail, though one of the women admitted to using the drug in South Korea.

According to court documents, Irine Melendy signed for a package that arrived from the Philippines at a friend’s house in Uijeongbu in March.

The court documents said the package contained fish, clothes and 15.1 grams of methamphetamine hidden in the bottom of some slippers.

Melendy, a 25-year-old who has been married to a U.S. soldier for nearly six years, said she didn’t know what was in the package and signed for it at a friend’s request.

“It was a big mistake,” she told Stars and Stripes.

That friend, Warren Alega, is in jail and on trial for drug smuggling charges along with Castro Aldwin, both of whom will testify when the women’s case reconvenes next week. The men live and work in South Korea and have no apparent connection to the U.S. military.

What is really jacked up about this is that one of the wives on trial is eight months pregnant and the Korean investigators took hair samples and found evidence that they both may have taken drugs.  It is bad enough to be possibly caught up in drug smuggling much less taking drugs while pregnant.  It will interesting to see how this turns out. 

More details are now emerging about what happened during last month’s policewoman rape case in Seoul involving to US soldiers:

One of two U.S. soldiers on trial for allegedly trying to rape an off-duty South Korean policewoman in April told a panel of judges Friday he was trying to catch a taxi when the incident occurred.

Pfc. Mark Feldmann, 21, testified that he told his friend, Sgt. Anthony Q. Basel, that he planned to smoke a cigarette outside the bar they were in and then catch a taxi home. The pair, based at Camp Stanley, were in Seoul on leave had spent the day drinking in at least two restaurants and two bars.

Feldmann said he tried to catch three taxis on a main street but none would stop, so he went through an alley to a side street. He said he was trying to catch a taxi there when Basel, who had just left a public bathroom, found him and told him they needed to leave.

South Korean police arrested both a short time later, saying they had tried to rape the police officer. Basel told the court that he did try to rape the woman, but remembered only being on top of her with his pants around his ankles because he had drunk at least 20 beers that day.

I’m surprised he could walk after drinking at least 20 beers.  What else I find interesting is that an NCO is hanging out and drinking with a private and the NCO is the one who appears to be drunk and out of control.  NCOs are not supposed to be hanging out with soldiers and especially drinking with them.  Usually the E5 sergeant rank is the worst violators of this and this case is a perfect example. 

The PFC will most likely be convicted of something because no US soldier ever gets acquitted in a Korean court, but if he does get acquitted I guess the command can bring him up on charges for abandoning his battle buddy.  If only he had the new battle buddy card maybe all of this could have been avoided.