Posted on Mar 8, 2023
How an Air Force captain was court-martialed for hanging up on a colonel
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Hmm...I agree a court martial wasn't warranted, but NJP was. I will say this about the urinalysis stuff. She got damn lucky they botched the chain of custody (my guees) on the sample. My experience is no lab or testor will purposely spike a sample to get anyone in trouble. But it's always someone in the chain is out to get the service person, it's never them ingesting the drugs and being caught.
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I'm with LTC Trent Klug - NJP instead of a court martial.
Regarding the drug test ... Looks like the defense did the "spaghetti defense" and threw everything against the wall hoping something would stick, and something did.
The comment by her defense witness was, "The amount detected by Donovan’s drug test is so slight that she may have ingested it accidentally from her surroundings without even noticing it"
However, 150 ng/mL is a common threshold (and the standard Federal Cutoff Workplace level) used to detect drug abuse and even that is too low for some* - "Cocaine is a common drug of abuse. To detect its use, a screening detection concentration for the cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine is commonly set at 150 ng/mL and its confirmatory cut-off is set at 100 ng/mL. Studies have suggested that these cut-offs may be set too high, allowing some patients with this substance abuse problem to be missed or improperly monitored.
I wasn't there and don't know all the facts of the situation. I can easily see it from either side - she was having issues because she was in a mental health crisis and that was what was at fault for all her troubles OR she started using drugs and that caused all her issues. Would have to see more of "behind the scenes" to render an opinion on that.
Again, at face level - NJP for the disrespect and kick her out for drugs. However, perfectly within his rights as the commander to skip NJP and take it to a court martial but (at face value) that is him being a hard-case.
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* Federal Cutoffs - https://store.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/d7/priv/sma12-4668.pdf
* Low levels - https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/dta.2153
Regarding the drug test ... Looks like the defense did the "spaghetti defense" and threw everything against the wall hoping something would stick, and something did.
The comment by her defense witness was, "The amount detected by Donovan’s drug test is so slight that she may have ingested it accidentally from her surroundings without even noticing it"
However, 150 ng/mL is a common threshold (and the standard Federal Cutoff Workplace level) used to detect drug abuse and even that is too low for some* - "Cocaine is a common drug of abuse. To detect its use, a screening detection concentration for the cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine is commonly set at 150 ng/mL and its confirmatory cut-off is set at 100 ng/mL. Studies have suggested that these cut-offs may be set too high, allowing some patients with this substance abuse problem to be missed or improperly monitored.
I wasn't there and don't know all the facts of the situation. I can easily see it from either side - she was having issues because she was in a mental health crisis and that was what was at fault for all her troubles OR she started using drugs and that caused all her issues. Would have to see more of "behind the scenes" to render an opinion on that.
Again, at face level - NJP for the disrespect and kick her out for drugs. However, perfectly within his rights as the commander to skip NJP and take it to a court martial but (at face value) that is him being a hard-case.
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* Federal Cutoffs - https://store.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/d7/priv/sma12-4668.pdf
* Low levels - https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/dta.2153
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