GovernmentExecutive.com

The Forest Service on Tuesday reached a $200,000 settlement with a group of whistleblowers who claimed supervisors at a national forest in Wyoming had retaliated against them for exposing mismanagement that harmed conservation efforts.

In 1994, eight employees at the Bighorn National Forest told a regional Forest Service supervisor that their boss had created a hostile work environment and had jeopardized environmental projects by allowing local ranchers to overgraze their livestock on public lands. They also claimed their manager had let a reforestation program at Bighorn lapse.

The Forest Service's regional supervisor visited the Bighorn employees and began an investigation. Investigators did not find conclusive evidence that the Bighorn supervisor had harmed environmental efforts or mismanaged the reforestation project, but the Forest Service still ended up reassigning the supervisor to a nonmanagement position at the regional office.

In the aftermath of the reassignment, one whistleblower lost her ecology position at Bighorn and was reassigned to another national forest. A second whistleblower agreed to a reassignment after supervisors told him his career was in danger if he stayed at Bighorn and the regional office passed him up for a promotion.

A new supervisor arrived at Bighorn in 1997 and, within a year, eliminated the jobs of four of the remaining whistleblowers, through a Workforce Reduction and Placement System (WRAPS), a reorganization method that only the Forest Service uses, according to the Office of Special Counsel.

The eight whistleblowers filed a complaint with the OSC, alleging that Bighorn supervisors had retaliated against them. On April 22, OSC announced that the Forest Service agreed to pay the whistleblowers a $200,000 settlement to be divided among them. The agency also agreed to give one whistleblower who lost his job because he refused a geographic reassignment an interim position. The Forest Service also changed another whistleblower's 14-day suspension to a reprimand.

Office of Special Counsel case, April 22, 2003

Lesser of Two Evils

Sexual assault charges stemming from a 1994 case will remain on a Navy petty officer's record, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.

In April 1994, two sailors on the USS Antietam accused Petty Officer Jim Turner of sexual misconduct. They alleged that he had propositioned and assaulted them. Turner's commanding officer initiated an investigation. During the investigation, a third sailor came forward accusing Turner of sexual misconduct.

After an investigation and an onboard proceeding under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Turner was charged with four counts of soliciting another to commit a homosexual act, four counts of indecent language and two counts of indecent assault, among other offenses. Turner's commanding officer found him guilty of all charges and punished him by demoting him one pay grade and making him forfeit two months of pay.

Turner appealed the decision, claiming his commanding officer lacked substantial evidence against him. For instance, according to Turner, one sailor accused him of sexual assault based on an incident one night when he and Turner shared a hotel room. The sailor had returned to the room drunk and when he woke up, he was naked. He could not remember how his clothes were removed, but accused Turner of assaulting him. He had no evidence of the assault other than the fact that he woke up naked.

But Turner's appeal was denied. In a second Article 15 onboard proceeding, the Administrative Discharge Board absolved Turner of some, but not all of the charges. The board recommended that the Navy discharge Turner with an "other than honorable" discharge.

The Navy discharged him in August 1994. Turner petitioned the secretary of the Navy to clear his record and rescind the discharge, but the secretary did not overturn the board's decision. Turner ultimately took his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, claiming there were procedural errors during his onboard trial and a lack of substantial evidence against him.

The Court of Appeals said there was enough evidence against Turner to uphold his conviction. The court also threw out Turner's allegations of procedural errors.

Turner claimed that under U.S. Code, Chapter 10, Section 815, onboard trials are only appropriate for minor offenses. Because the charges against him were not minor, Turner said he should have been tried by a court-martial, where prosecutors carry a higher burden of proof and would have needed more evidence to convict him.

The appeals court decision explained that had Turner been prosecuted by a court-martial and been found guilty, he would have received a much more severe punishment. Therefore, Turner's supervisors were doing him a favor by allowing him to have an onboard trial, the court said. Turner could have received a dishonorable discharge and more than 10 years of prison time if found guilty under a general court-martial, the court said.

Jim A. Turner v. Navy, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (02-5067), April 15, 2003