A platoon sergeant from Texas was sentenced Friday to three months in prison and a one-rank demotion in the hazing-related suicide of a 19-year-old Asian-American soldier in Afghanistan last year.<\/p>\n
Staff Sgt. Blaine G. Dugas Jr. of Port Arthur, Texas, was convicted of dereliction of duty _ specifically, that he failed to ensure the well-being of his soldiers by monitoring corrective training. His rank was reduced to E-5. A military judge found him not guilty of three other charges in connection with the death of Pvt. Danny Chen of New York, The Fayetteville Observer reported Friday.<\/p>\n
Authorities say Chen shot himself last October in a guard tower at a southern Afghanistan outpost after being hazed over his ethnicity.<\/p>\n
Military prosecutors accused Dugan, Chen’s platoon sergeant, of not doing anything to stop the harassment.<\/p>\n
“He failed Danny Chen,” said prosecutor Sasha Rutizer. “He failed everybody in his unit.”<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said it was Dugas’ job to look after soldiers’ morale and welfare, and that the Chinese American’s maltreatment was rampant because of Dugas’ poor leadership.<\/p>\n
Dugas, 36, was found not guilty of making a false official statement and two other dereliction-of-duty charges. His attorneys argued he has already been punished enough.<\/p>\n
Dugas receives credit for the 90 days he’s been imprisoned, meaning he won’t serve any more time behind bars for Chen’s death.<\/p>\n
The president of a New York organization advocating justice for Chen said the light sentence is extremely disappointing.<\/p>\n
“As the senior enlisted officer, Sgt. Dugas was in a position of power to stop the abuse and didn’t,” said Elizabeth OuYang of OCA-NY. “There is no place in the Army for a staff sergeant … who turns a blind eye to racial abuse and hazing by superiors.”<\/p>\n
Dugas pleaded guilty to violating a general order, for wrongfully possessing and consuming alcohol.<\/p>\n
Dugas’ civilian lawyer, Guy Womack, said the racial slurs Chen’s fellow soldiers called him in Afghanistan _ including fortune cookie and Jackie Chan _ should have been considered “terms of endearment,” the Fayetteville newspaper reported.<\/p>\n
Womack said it wasn’t Dugas’ job to make the deployment “feel like a vacation.”<\/p>\n
“These are not people sitting in a library in Utah,” he said in his closing arguments. “These are people at war.”<\/p>\n
Dugas was the third soldier to face court martial in Chen’s death.<\/p>\n
Spc. Ryan J. Offutt of Greenville, Pa., was sentenced to six months in prison, demotion to private and a bad conduct discharge following a plea agreement. Sgt. Adam Holcomb of Youngstown, Ohio, was sentenced to 30 days in prison and the loss of one rank.<\/p>\n
All of the defendants were members of the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division based at Fort Wainwright, Alaska.<\/p>\n
Information from: The Fayetteville Observer, http:\/\/www.fayobserver.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A platoon sergeant from Texas was sentenced Friday to three months in prison and a one-rank demotion in the hazing-related suicide of a 19-year-old Asian-American soldier in Afghanistan last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-up-to-date-news-on-everything-asian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21631,"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21630\/revisions\/21631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.asianinny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}