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Hazardous Duty in Short Desertion: the Formulation of Military Law Concepts

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Hazardous Duty in Short Desertion: the Formulation of Military Law Concepts William & Mary Law Review Volume 4 (1963) Issue 2 Article 5 April 1963 Hazardous Duty in Short Desertion: The Formulation of Military Law Concepts Alfred Avins Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr Part of the Military, War, and Peace Commons Repository Citation Alfred Avins, Hazardous Duty in Short Desertion: The Formulation of Military Law Concepts, 4 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 129 (1963), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol4/iss2/5 Copyright c 1963 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr 1963] HAzARDous DuTY HAZARDOUS DUTY IN SHORT DESERTION: THE FORMULATION OF MILITARY LAW CONCEPTS ALFRED AvINs* A. Lybrand's Case, Current Military Law Formation, and HazardousDuty in Short Desertion. The traditional casenote is written a few months after the decision is published. A year after the case is reported, it is already like the autumn leaves, losing its vitality and ready to drop to the earth, there to mix with the mass of the law ts new cases press it out of focus. When two years have elapsed, the opinion typically has grown as stale as last year's snow. To discuss a case seventeen years old must seem like a display of extraordinary procrastination. Nevertheless, one can sometimes gain a new focus with old glasses. This author has been a repeated critic of current substantive military law formation, as being haphazard, unsci- entific, and just plain out of touch with those considerations which should be considered relevant. 1 However, in criticizing the negative aspects of substantive military law formulation, this author has not heretofore set forth in a step-by-step analysis the means which military tribunals should use in creating substantive military law. This methodology can best be explored by focusing on a specific problem. The problem of what constitutes "hazardous duty" in military desertion affords an advantageous field for this endeav- or. Article 85(a) (2) of the Uniform Code of MilitaryJustice2 *B.A., LL.B., LLM., M.L., J.S.D., Associate Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law. I Avins, Proof of Desertion Through Prolonged Absence, 44 CORNELL L. Q. 356, 376-7 (1959); Avins, The Joker in Jester: The Parris Island Death March Case; 53 NORTHWESTERN UNIV. L. REV. 33, 58-9 (1918); Avins, Military Leadership and the Law, 47 CALIF. L. REV. 828, 853-5 (1959); Avins, New Light on the Legislative History of Desertion Through FraudulentEnlistment: The Decline of the United States Court of Military Appeals, 46 MINN. L. REV. 69 (1961). 2 10 U.S.C. § 885 (a) (2). WILLIAM AND MARY LAW REVIEW [VOL. 4:129 makes it a capital crime in time of war for a serviceman to go AWOL with intent to avoid "hazardous duty," as one soldier whose life-span was considerably shortened by a firing squad during World War II found out to his regret.3 The legislative history of the statute is singularly scanty as to the meaning of the term "hazardous";4 the Manual for Courts-Martial provides little more guidance.5 Accordingly, the military courts are left to shift for themselves as best they can, to formulate a definition of "hazardous" through case- by-case analysis and application. The process through which this common-law formulation of substantive military law is carried on in this field provides a fruitful microcosm by which methodology in military law-making can be studied. Of all the cases involving the meaning of "hazardous duty" in short desertion, Lybrand's case6 is the most worthy of analysis in depth. A doubtful case, with a difficult fact pattern, it presents a complex of problems which should have produced a perceptive discussion. Instead the Board of Review deciding it followed a stereotyped route to an unim- pressive result. Although decided during World War II, the problems this case raises are of current interest and importance. This article will focus on that case, taking up first the Board of Review's opinion, next the infirmities in which its route resulted, and finally a more satisfactory solution to military law formulation, in this area. From this, it is believed that military law formulation in other areas can avoid the same type of pitfalls. B. A HaphazardApproach to Test for HazardousDuty. On November 3, 1943, Lybrand, the accused, was a mem- ber of a company located in Sicily. On that date, when accused went AWOL, it was common knowledge among members of the company that they were preparing for overseas movement, the general rumor being that the outfit was being shipped to SETO 5555, Slovik, 15 ETO 151 (1945). 1 Avins, A History of Short Desertions, 13 MILITARY L. REV. 142,162 (1961). 5 manual for Courts-Martial, U.S., 1951, Exec. Order 10214, para. 164(a) (2), at 311. 6 ETO 2368, Lybrand, 6 ETO 333 (1944). 19631 HAZARDOus DuTy England. Between that date and November 7th, when accused was returned to his organization, the company moved to a staging area at Palermo, Sicily, a concededly non-hazardous journey. Two days after accused was returned, the company embarked on a transport and proceeded by water from Palermo to Liverpool, England, without being subjected to enemy attack or other hazard. On the day accused was returned, he was asked why he left. He told his commanding officer that "he was fed up" with his unit and "had no intention of coming back until after the 9th Division had left Sicily." He also informed the officer that he wanted to get into a unit in Italy, and would not have returned except for the fact that MP's apprehended him. 7 Accused was charged with AWOL with "intent to avoid hazardous duty, to wit: 'Movement overseas,' " as a violation of the then short desertion statute. Faced with the problem of proving this uneventful voyage to be hazardous, the prosecu- tion at trial asked various company officers for their opinions. For example, the company commander testified: "I don't confess to be an authority as to whether or not it is hazardous, but it does involve the chance of being torpedoed or hit by a bomb." And the following colloquy occurred between the prosecution and the executive officer: "Q. Would the trip from Palermo to England be consid- ered hazardous? "A. I don't believe at the time that we left that we knew where we were going. "Q. Would the ordinary overseas movement be con- sidered hazardous? "A. Yes . if you didn't know where you were going. "Q. Then, at the time you were preparing for a move- ment overseas, while still in Sicily, would that prospective movement be considered dangerous? 7Id., at 336. WILLIAM AND MARY LAW REVIEW [VOL. 4:129 "A. I think it would be."8 The unsatisfactory nature of the above evidence is patent. A group of company grade infantry officers could hardly be considered experts on ship sinkings or the chances of surviving a sea voyage. Such information as they would have would no doubt be based on rumor, fourth-hand hearsay, and whatever isolated experiences they may have had. An opinion based on such a lack of knowledge is valueless, and indeed prej- udicial. The above officers were giving vent to personal fears, rather than adding factual knowledge. They may have antic- ipated danger although the seas had been swept clear of enemy craft; contrawise, they may believe no danger existed although submarines lurked at every turn and the enemy air force was swarming about. Such subjective opinions are not legal proof, and even the board of review seems to have been unimpressed with this evidence. Faced with a void in the record on the issue of hazard, the board declares that "the heart of the case against accused is the question whether the court was justified in taking judicial notice that the journey by water from Palermo, Sicily, to Liverpool, England,... was 'hazardous duty.' "9 The board's road to thus dispensing with inconveniently absent evidence commences with selections defining hazard from civilian dictionaries, hardly an illuminating source in light of the vague generalities to be found therein. 1o Next the board moves to civilian sources. "All navigation is perilous," it says, citing a civilian case, '' a theory which would obliterate the distinction between hazardous and non- hazardous duty in the navy and in all army overseas move- ments as well. Apparently unconvinced themselves by so sweeping a doctrine, it postulates the "obvious" elements of hazard involved in a wartime sea journey in a theater of opera- sId., at 336-7. 9 Id., at 339. 10 Extracted from these sources are the following: "Exposed to or involving danger; perilous; risky" and "involving hazard or special danger." Id., at 340. This hardly advances the board's analysis at all. 11Moores v. Louisville Underwriters, 14 Fed. 226, 234 (C.C.W.D. Tenn., 1882). 19631 HAZARDOUS DUTY tions. The board cites one civilian case for the proposition that vessels are menaced by "removal for belligerent purposes of all or any aids to navigation,"1 2 although there is not the slightest shred of evidence cited to support the theory that this alleged peril ever seriously endangered Allied shipping during World War II. The board then cites a third case to show the peril of submarines,13 and winds up by taking judicial notice itself of the danger of enemy air action. To start with, civilian precedents are generally inapplicable to a determination of what hazardous duty is because they look to one object while military law looks to another.
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