Court martial of former Wright-Patt commander shows difference from civilian trial
Apr. 14—A court martial of Col. Christopher Meeker, former commander of the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, is scheduled to begin Tuesday at the base.
The trial is open to anyone who has access to the base, said Derek Kaufman, spokesman for the Air Force Materiel Command.
The referred charges include one charge and one specification under Article 90, "willfully disobeying superior commissioned officer," and one charge and two specifications under Article 134, "extramarital sexual conduct and fraternization."
There are some distinct differences between a civilian trial and a court martial of a uniformed member of the military.
"Willfully disobeying superior commissioned officer," for example, is a distinctively military charge.
"This offense and others, including failure to obey a lawful order or regulation, desertion, malingering, and mutiny ... are distinctly military offenses designed to maintain good order and discipline in the armed forces by making specific conduct criminally punishable," then-Lt. Col. Andrew Norton, an Air Force judge advocate, wrote in 2019.
Another big difference between courts-martial and civilian trials: There are no mistrials.
"That is because the military is one of the few jurisdictions that allows for split verdicts in criminal trials," Norton wrote.
Another difference, according to Norton: "Military members may plead guilty only if they truly believe themselves to be guilty." The military does not allow nolo contendere or "no contest" pleas.
Don Christensen, a former chief prosecutor for the Air Force and the president of the group Protect Our Defenders, said military courts-martial have rigorous and well developed rules of evidence. Defendants are entitled to free defense representation, no matter what their rank, he said.
"You can appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court at no cost," he said.
There is no hung jury in the military. To secure a conviction, prosecutors need to have three-quarters of the members of the jury agree to a guilty verdict.
And military juries tend to be highly educated and heedful of instructions while judges tend to judge only criminal cases, Christensen said.
"If I were innocent, I would want to be tried to court martial," he said.
Meeker assumed command of the the 88th Air Base Wing in July 2022. He was fired in late December 2023 by Lt. Gen. Donna Shipton, commander of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, also headquartered at Wright-Patterson.
Since it's possible Shipton will be a material witness in the case, she transferred the case to another convening authority, Maj. Gen. Charles D. Bolton, 18th Air Force commander at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.
Meeker waived an Article 32 preliminary hearing and charges were referred to a general court-martial by Bolton.
Parties agreed afterwards to change the date and venue of the trial.
Two years ago this month, an Air Force judge sentenced former Maj. Gen. William Cooley to a reprimand and ordered that he forfeit $10,910 of monthly pay for five months.
Cooley, then 56, was a two-star general and a former commander of Air Force Research Laboratory. He was found guilty in a Wright-Patterson court martial of one specification of abusive sexual contact against his brother's wife. Prosecutors said he forcibly kissed his sister-in-law after a family barbecue in New Mexico.
Cooley was the first Air Force general officer to be court-martialed and convicted.
In May 2023, Air Force Materiel Command said Cooley would retire as a colonel in June that year, a demotion of two ranks.
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