Saturday, October 27, 2007

U.S. v. Murphy referred to trial

Apologies if this was posted elsewhere before, but I didn't see it: according to this article in the Air Force Times, the Murphy case has been referred to trial. The thirteen specifications that made the referral include nine instances of conduct unbecoming, three specifications of larceny over $500, and one spec of violating a lawful general regulation. Nine specs were dismissed prior to the scheduled date of Colonel Murphy's Article 32 hearing (which Colonel Murphy subsequently waived).

Interestingly, the Times article states that the larceny specs are unrelated to the licensure issues that formed the original core of the charges. I hadn't heard that before.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the larceny counts relate to expense account fraud for MCLE classes he did not in fact attend.

andrewdb

Christopher Mathews said...

That was the rumor I had heard as well, but the Times article seems to suggest otherwise: The larceny charges against Murphy have nothing to do with the credential issue and are related to alleged incidents uncovered during the course of the investigation. Although I could be suffering from poor reading comprehension, or there might have been a misunderstanding on the part of the author, that passage seems to exclude fraudulent MCLE travel, which would be very much connected to Colonel Murphy's credentialing issues.

Still ... the language of the larceny specs themselves probably would help to narrow down the options. Is there anyone out there in CAAFlogland who's actually seen the charge sheet?

Dwight Sullivan said...

Sacramentum provided a transcription of the original charge sheet here:

http://militaryjusticeblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/colonel-murphy.html

Christopher Mathews said...

Thanks, CAAFlog!

The larceny specs aren't especially illuminating on their own, but the timing of the alleged theft of money from Hickam AFB coincides with an alleged false statement about teaching an advocacy course at Louisiana State University ... the dates don't match exactly, but they're close enough that a causal link is possible. If so, the Times reporter got it wrong.

Anonymous said...

Welcome back Sacramentum. At least not another dead Mil Jus blogger.