Conduct Unbecoming: A Military True Crime Podcast

Growing up in the Golden State means a certain familiarity with warm summers and fire risks. We worry about lightning strikes, gender reveal parties that involve any kind of explosives, and lost hikers who, for some unknown reason, light a flare instead of using their working cell phone to summon assistance. The California I grew up in is this way because of an awareness of a challenging climate,...

Any time I've walked into a barracks building, I'm immediately transported back to freshman year at the college dorms. There's a lot of growing up that happens in both spaces for a similarly aged group. It can be a really joyful and festive atmosphere, and I often think of how simple and easy it was to just leave the deadbolt out on your door so you friends could come and go while you got ready to...

Petty Officer Williams woke to the sound of her alarm in the morning of November 6th. Williams, the mother to a five-year-old, should have woken to the soft noises of her child stirring in the next room. Perhaps she would have normally tripped over errant clothing even a dreaded Lego piece as she began to don her uniform and prepare for work.  Instead of a debate over breakfast choices, Williams s...

A move to a new duty station is a bit of a fresh start - that's my preferred framework for thinking about the move. Afterall, it can smart a bit to think about the family and friends we had to say goodbye to, so focusing on the "opportunity" of it all is a little easier. This approach only works when it's not your nuclear family you're saying goodbye to. When Sergeant Abdullah's wife decided she c...

When we hear information repeated to us, we're hardwired to begin to believe it. The positive effect we feel when we hear the information or story repeated is called the illusory truth effect. We have a pretty good example of the illusory truth effect in my family - I remember the story of why we adopted two cats very differently than everyone else. I am stuck on believing that we went to the anim...

A half hour up the road from resort-lined beaches is an Army base nestled in the interior of Oahu. Though the on-base housing might not be beach front, they've got ready access to everything the island has to offer. Maybe living in paradise was too much pressure, but a series of decisions First Lieutenant Brinkman-Coronel may have made while wasted in Waikiki prompted the Army to prepare to admini...

Stop me If you've seen A Few Good Men . A group of servicemembers sneak into a soldier's bedroom in the middle of the night to do a bit of corrective action. When day breaks miles away from American shores, a mysterious death nearly gets papered over, ignored, or under investigated. But four servicemembers serving in Africa failed to learn any lessons from Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Kevin Bac...

I've left mission-driven non-profit jobs twice. It was really emotionally taxing to leave jobs that I really believed in once upon a time--I was so committed to the mission in both instances, and had been so full of hope that I would make a difference when I started. My experiences, naturally, shaped my beliefs around mission-driven work, and I've concluded that people don't leave mission-driven w...

If you are old enough to remember the foibles of a certain President around the turn of the millennia, you're likely familiar with the phrase, "it's not the crime, it's the cover up." For Corporal Laurean, stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, this was undoubtedly true.  Laurean likely committed either sexual assault or adultery... but his coverup made him a murderer. I relied on the North Ca...

I don't think anyone would accuse me of having good luck when it comes to my checked luggage making it with me on trips. I've had a number of suitcases driven up days after my arrival. Most recently, our luggage on our move from Japan went to Washington DC while we… went to Austin, Texas. It all worked out, mostly because of incredible people that love us and intervened to take care of us, our swe...

Captain Brown arrived at Minot Air Force Base some time before June 2012 and although Air Force duty station assignments are short, he was determined to make the most of his stint in North Dakota. Even in places where the cost of living might be less, it can be helpful to pick up a second stream of income and Brown wasn't going to be left behind.  He had his choice of side hustles - he could join...

In the old cobblestone streets of Mons, Belgium, Lieutenant Becker and his wife had an opportunity to start fresh. They were thousands of miles from their family and friends and, when faced with the stress of moving overseas, they could either lean on one another… or separate. When it became clear that leaning on one another wasn't an option, they began to unpick their lives and separate from one...

It's a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy beats girl. One in four women experience domestic or intimate partner violence, but it's a statistic that may be a little misleading. It certainly doesn't mean that one in four men commit domestic violence.  Staff Sergeant Daddario, for instance, got violent with at least three women in under a year. I relied on the AFCCA opinion and brief . I refere...

While I was in college, our sorority traveled for an out-of-town vaguely sporty event held on the beaches of Santa Barbara, California. We were assigned a coach from the host organization who somehow knew even less about the sport than we did and whose sole task seemed to be encouraging us to drink alcohol. It was seven AM. When we arrived at the venue, it was kind of a relief to discover a series...

Before we got hitched, married friends of ours sat us down and warned us about the perils of moving in with one another. They described the challenges they faced when they first moved in together and it was only after they worked through the stressors of change that they felt confident enough to tie the knot. I give a similar chat to friends who are getting serious in relationships, but I've tailo...

On Sunday mornings, we like to take our dogs for a walk to the local donut shop. It's a nice tradition and supports a local family owned business. If you're in the market for a Sunday morning tradition, I hope you consider ours. If that's not your speed, I'd at least like to implore you to avoid Corporal Metz's apparent tradition of walking into the grounds maintenance facility on base, dumping fu...

Anything can happen when people head home for a trip. Hallmark would have you believe that you'll abandon your high power career in your new home city to fall in love with a Christmas tree farmer or hometown pastry chef. The CDC would remind you that transmission of contagious diseases increases in the winter when everyone heads indoors together and gets all cozy with one another. And Senior Airma...

About a decade ago, as I prepared to enter the gauntlet of law school, my mom and I flew to Maui. It was a chance to relax before three years of stress culminating in the big bad Bar exam. We wanted to see the island from the top of Haleakala and made our way up the sometimes narrow, sometimes cliffside path. We found the occasional switch back navigable but we went slow and hugged the center line...

As residents of Las Vegas can attest, it's not all showgirls and sequins. Once you get away from the glitz and out of view of the Sphere, it's a lot like any other city where people live their day-to-day lives. They get up, exercise, go to work, raise their kids, and pay taxes in the usual cycle of adulthood. There's one extraordinarily helpful advantage they've got on us, though. In a city famous...

In the early days of stay at home orders, media outlets warned of a potential shadow epidemic. Furtively reported stories reminded Americans that there would be people sheltering in place with their abusers and we worried there would be a spike in deaths as a result of domestic violence. But perhaps what we didn't think about, what we didn't warn people about, was the danger of sheltering in a pla...

I'm going to let you in on a little secret - in common law countries, like the United States, the law is practiced, largely, by comparing your case to all the other cases and finding things that are the same or different. Like a complex "spot the differences" exercise. As lawyers, we're working to compare our facts to those facts and explain why they should or shouldn't be treated in the same way....

In the soft rolling hills of Italy, with just days to go before deploying, a young soldier sent messages to his loved ones and prepared to travel to Turkey. He wasn't supposed to share information about where he was going--troop movement security and all that--but he just couldn't help himself. He wanted his loved ones to be able to find him, find him and his colleagues. It was unfortunate, of cou...

It's important to have at least some familiarity with the habits and interests of your partner. My spouse has a deep love of golf and while I can't claim to be even halfway decent at the sport,  I find a cute outfit and bop around the course anyway. Instagram suggests funny golf reels that I share with him in a self perpetuating algorithm cycle. In return, he displays whatever craft of the moment...

I've detailed some of the concerning relationship patterns young folks who join the military engage in- namely, getting engaged awfully fast and married terribly young. The arrangement can be dicey- not every marriage survives the peaks and valleys of military life. In 2016, Senior Airman Chase Easterly began dating someone he really liked and felt like he might have a future with. Less than a wee...

I speak as someone who often served as Sober Sister at sorority events: caretaking for drunk people is a lot of thankless work. We do it because we love our people and want them to stay safe… but I vastly preferred chasing a tipsy sister down the block to bring her back to the party to what Airman First Class Sean Harrington's friends had to endure. Harrington, as it turned out, was not a pleasant...