Air Farce, Or Into The Wild Blue Slander

The USAF general who unilaterally overturned a lieutenant's conviction for sexual assault last year is speaking out about the case, and frankly, yeah he's just as awful as you could imagine.

Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin drew headlines and outrage in March for overturning Lt. Col. James Wilkerson’s sexual assault conviction, nullifying his remaining prison sentence and returning him to service in the Air Force. In his letter to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley defending his decision, Franklin explained that he was acting fully in compliance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and that he would be “entirely remiss in [his] sworn military duty and responsibility” if he had not overturned the jury’s findings.

Franklin’s memo listed 18 points of contention he saw in the evidence presented during Wilkerson’s court-martial, including several points that either were ruled inadmissible in court or specifically shifted the blame of any assault on the victim.

Yeah, because the victim deserved it, so he had to overturn a conviction by jury.  Among the general's reasons:

• The victim turned down three offers of a ride and seemed to have differing reasons why she wanted to stay.
• The victim had trouble identifying and describing parts of the house, didn’t remember the attacker’s mustache and didn’t correctly describe her path out of the house.
• Wilkerson’s wife’s account of the events differed in some details from her husband’s, but Franklin said the conflicts suggested that the two didn’t collude on a manufactured story.


• Testimony from the friend who took the alleged victim to the hospital the next day was not admissible in court, but Franklin said it indicated there could be a reason the woman might be less than candid.

Yeah.  His mustache.  That must be totally exculpatory evidence.  Luckily, Chuck Hagel is fixing this idiocy:

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on Tuesday proposed a change in the current law that would strip the convening authority of their ability to overturn verdicts in most cases as the first step in correcting the military’s sexual assault problem. Currently an estimated 19,000 instances of military sexual trauma take place in the U.S. armed services every year, the vast majority of which go unreported for fear of reprisal or scorn. 

US Air Farce strikes again, but all the armed services need a long, hard serious look at sexual harassment policies.