Justice Department seeks reinstatement of Bowe Bergdahl’s court-martial conviction
By COREY DICKSTEIN
STARS AND STRIPES • September 26, 2023
Federal prosecutors asked a judge to reinstate the 2017 court-martial conviction of former Army soldier and Taliban captive Bowe Bergdahl, arguing a civilian federal judge wrongly dismissed the sentence earlier this year.
Justice Department prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton to “leave intact” Bergdahl’s November 2017 sentence, charging in recent court filings that Walton’s July decision to vacate the conviction relied on incorrect analysis of another case regarding a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The judge dismissed Bergdahl’s convictions on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy — to which the former soldier had pleaded guilty — based on the failure of the military judge in Bergdahl’s case to disclose that he had applied for a job as a federal immigration judge just before the court-martial.
Walton, a judge with the U.S. District Court for Washington, issued a 63-page opinion July 25 that vacated decisions made by the military judge, then-Army Col. Jeffrey R. Nance, during the court-martial, including the sentence he imposed after a weeklong sentencing trial at Fort Bragg — now Fort Liberty — in North Carolina. Nance sentenced Bergdahl to a dishonorable discharge, loss of pay and reduction in rank from E-5 sergeant to E-1 private, sparing him any jail time.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2023-09-26/bergdahl-army-court-martial-taliban-afghanistan-11502671.html
