Mr. LaGrone at the United States Naval Institute published the following article today. As the article surmises, I think Lieutenant Coppock will be testifying for the prosecution in a future court-marshal. My only hope is that the (very expensive) lessons are not lost in the punishments.
Former USS Fitzgerald Officer Pleads Guilty to Negligence Charge for Role in Collision
By: Sam LaGrone
WASHINGTON NAVY YARD – Lt. j.g. Sarah B. Coppock was
contrite and quiet when she pleaded guilty on a single criminal charge for her
role in the collision between the guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and a merchant ship
that killed seven sailors.
Before a military judge and almost a dozen family members of
the sailors who died, she pleaded guilty to one violation of Article 92 of the
Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Coppock was the officer of the deck when Fitzgerald collided with ACX Crystal off the coast of Japan on
June 17. As part of a plea arrangement, she told military judge Capt. Charles
Purnell her actions were partially responsible for the deaths of the sailors
who drowned in their berthing after the collision.
“My entire career my guys have been my number one priority,”
she said.
“When it mattered, I failed them. I made a tremendously bad
decision and they paid the price.”
In her plea, Coppock admitted that she violated ship
commander Cmdr. Bryce Benson’s standing orders several times during the
overnight transit off the coast of Japan, violated Coast Guard navigation
rules, did not communicate effectively with the watch standers in the Combat
Information Center, did not operate safely in a high-density traffic condition
and did not alert the crew ahead of a collision.
Purnell sentenced her three months reduced pay and issued a
punitive reprimand.
While Coppock did admit to wrongdoing, both the prosecutors
and defense attorneys painted a picture of a difficult operating environment.
When Fitzgerald
collided with Crystal, the
malfunctioning SPS-73 bridge radar was tracking more than 200 surface tracks –
a mix of large merchant ships and fishing vessels near the coast of Japan,
according to the findings of fact in the trial. Coppock was under orders for
the ship to cross a busy merchant shipping lane – a so-called traffic
separation – that wasn’t labeled on the charts provided by the navigation team.
She was also ordered to keep the ship moving at a high-rate of speed during the
transit – 20 to 22 knots. The high speed lowered the time the crew could react
to ships around them.
Coppock said she didn’t rely enough on the officers on watch
in the ship’s combat information center (CIC) to help keep track of the surface
contacts as a back up to her crew on the bridge. Prosecutors and defense
attorneys that the conditions aboard Fitzgerald
made the collision more likely.
“Coppock failed in her duties, but she received very little
support,” prosecutor Lt. Cmdr. Paul Hochmuth argued during the sentencing
portion of the trial.
“Being complacent was the standard on USS Fitzgerald.”
During the sentencing portion of the trial, lawyers for the
defense outlined the gapped billets and inability to complete training on Fitzgerald. For example, the ship had
been without a chief quartermaster for two years before the collision, and the
SPS-73 navigation radar was unreliable, defense attorney Lt. Ryan Mooney said,
quoting from the Navy’s investigation into the collision. The watch stander in
the CIC who operated the SPS-67 search and surveillance radar was unfamiliar
with the system.
“Lt. Coppock was not put in a position to succeed,” Mooney
said.
“She was set up to fail.”
As part of her statement to the court, Coppock described a
tattoo on her left wrist that she got shortly after she returned to shore after
the incident. The tattoo includes the coordinates of the location of the
collision; the motto of the ship, “Protect your People”; and seven shamrocks,
one for each of the sailors who drowned in the flooded berthing.
“I’ll never forget [the coordinates],” she told the judge.
“I spent two hours yelling it in a radio trying to get
help.”
The trial now supersedes a non-judicial punishment issuance
by then-U.S. 7th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin for Coppock shortly
following the collision. Her case was reconsidered for court-martial following
the assignment of Adm. James Caldwell, director of Naval Reactors, as the
Consolidated Disposition Authority who was appointed to oversee additional
accountability actions for the Fitzgerald
and USS John S. McCain (DDG-56)
collisions.
One military attorney told USNI News that trying a service
member at court-martial after assigning punishment at NJP was an unusual move.
“It’s unusual to follow [non-judicial punishment] with a
court-martial,” Rob “Butch” Bracknell, a former Marine and military lawyer,
told USNI News on Tuesday.
“So the increased punishment is effectively a couple
thousand dollars fine and a misdemeanor conviction on a charge of dereliction
resulting in death? What was the point?”
The charge Coppock faced on Tuesday as part of the plea
agreement was less severe than charges announced by the Navy in January, in
which Coppock and two other unidentified junior officers on Fitzgerald faced a combination of
charges that included negligent homicide and hazarding a vessel.
While not specified in the trial, the nature of the plea
agreement suggests Coppock will likely be a prosecution witness against the
upcoming courts-martial of then-Fitzgerald
commander Benson or the two other junior officers who have been charged, two
military lawyers told USNI News last week.
The two watchstanders who were in the CIC during the
collision will face a judge on Wednesday for preliminary hearings on criminal
charges for their roles in the collision that include hazarding a vessel and
negligence.
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