FORT MEADE, Md. – An Army doctor who disobeyed orders to deploy to Afghanistan because he questioned President Barack Obama's eligibility to be commander in chief was sentenced by a jury Thursday to six months in a military prison and will be dismissed from the Army.
The military jury spent nearly five hours deliberating punishment for Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin on Thursday after three days of court martial proceedings at Fort Meade, outside Baltimore, Md.
Lakin was convicted of disobeying orders — he had pleaded guilty to that count — and missing a flight that would have gotten him to his eventual deployment. An army commander, Maj. Gen. Karl Horst, still has to approve the sentence returned by the jury and has the option to reduce it. Lakin could then appeal.
Lakin said Wednesday that despite his questions about Obama's eligibility for office, he was wrong not to follow Army orders. He acknowledged that the Army was the wrong place to raise his concerns about Obama, asked to keep his job and said he was now willing to deploy.
"I don't want it to end this way," Lakin told the jury Wednesday under questioning from his lawyer. "I want to continue to serve."
Military prosecutors disagreed. On Thursday morning, a military prosecutor asked the jury to sentence Lakin to at least two years in a military prison and to dismiss him from the service. It was a sentence he "invited and he earned," military prosecutor Capt. Philip J. O'Beirne told the jury.
| Indeed he did, and the courts martial got both the verdict and the punishment right. |
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