Legal Question in Military Law in Utah

You need to have an attorney who specializes in military law to assist you. If you were being ignored by the medical branch of the Army, why didn't you go to the Inspector General? Having a discharge other than honorable, is not a good thing to have around your neck for the rest of your life. You need to determine what type of discharge the Army will give you, under what conditions and if there will be any jail time because of your absence for the last 2 years. This is a situation where an attorney would be able to assist you.

If you do this on your own you may not achieve the result you are looking for. With two actions ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, you may not be dropped from record at all.

Patrick Tracy

If I was on your case and you still wanted to pursue going to PCF, I would contact your old unit in Hawaii to seek to get them to go ahead and do your DFR packet. If they would agree to do this, I could then escort you back to military control in person at Fort Sill (I am located in Oklahoma and often soldiers to PCF). As long as you are in fact DFR'd this time AND your unit in Hawaii won't object, you should have no problem getting discharged out at PCF. (if you wanted to super safe, you could go to Fort Knox instead of Fort Sill, in case you are worried about the PCF staff being upset that you went AWOL against instead of going back to Hawaii)

If you go to PCF, you do want to bring extensive documentation with you of the medical issues to submit with your packet. While PCF doesn't often give better discharges than the OTH (other than honorable) it does happen sometimes (I have several of my clients get general discharges there). Also if you do get stuck with the OTH, you will have a better chance at a discharge upgrade if you could show you did all you could to get things handled properly in the first place.

Another option of course would be to go back to Hawaii and try to negotiate your way into a med board and away from a court-martial. This would be difficult to accomplish but not impossible. The key to success would be having extensive mitigating documentation to show your medical issues and the fact that you weren't given proper medical care when you were in the Army.

In either case I would be glad to help you. My rates are reasonable and I don't charge for the first consultation.

Lastly, I've written an article on Army AWOL policies that could be useful to you. You can download it in PDF format at: http://www.nlgmltf.org/onWatch/Onwatch_xx-3_Jan_Feb_2009.pdf

James Branum