A U.S. sailor was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 18 years in a military prison Thursday after being found guilty of espionage while working for the Navy in Japan.
Bryce Pedicini, a former chief petty officer fire controlman, was convicted of attempted espionage, failure to obey a general order and attempted violation of a general order through a court-martial procedure. He was assigned to the guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins in Japan when he was taken into pretrial confinement last year.
According to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Pedicini delivered classified and national defense information for a foreign government official from November 2022 to May 2023. He engaged with the foreign official “under the guise of writing research papers,” it said. The Navy described that as a tactic U.S. adversaries increasingly use to obtain both classified and unclassified document.
I don’t understand the charge of failure to obey a general order in this context. General orders are orders for guarding posts. For the army there are three and the navy there are 11. It’s stuff like don’t quit your post without proper relief, don’t talk outside of duty based things, salute officers….things like that. None of them are about espionage as far as I’m aware.
An article 92 is almost always included, and often the only charge in the Navy if handled by the captain and not court martial.
Especially in that case, Article 92 could be anything.
Like, if they say “don’t buy booze for people who aren’t 21” and you do and get caught?
That’s an article 92.
Get caught shoplifting Robitussin because no one will buy you booze?
That’s an article 92.
Stay up for days in a row because of a WoW addiction?
Believe it or not also an article 92.
The Navy has the most “failure to obey a general order” charges because of article 92.
The most ridiculous I saw was a guy got a sun burn so bad he couldn’t work for a couple days. Got an Article 92. If the military member agrees to Captains Mast over Court Martial, the captain can do what they want. And Navy Captains tend to like broad interpretations of what they and anyone else can do.
Quick edit:
Most ridiculous as in funny.
For fucked up ridiculous, I knew a girl that broke her foot on the ship while in port. Onboard medical said it wasnt because if it was broke shed get rotated off the ship because she couldn’t be in her work area.
She said she was going to the on base hospital after work and they told her not to.
The next day she shows up in a walking boot with a note from the hospital about her foot being broke…
Got taken to captains mast for disobeying a direct order and lost. So confined the ship, demoted, pay taken. All because she went to the hospital for a broken foot. When she should have went to shore duty for a couple months to let it to heal.
I started telling junior sailors that Captain’s Mast was something they had to agree to, and that the Captain would be unlikely to take anything to Court Martial because it makes them look bad.
I was warned by a “nice” officer that it could technically be considered mutiny…
And Article 92.
You’re overall point stands, but I don’t know that I believe that someone got an article 92 over a sunburn. I’ve heard some variation of that from a bunch of people and even may be guilty of having spread it myself, but I have never actually seen it and couldn’t find anything from a cursory search. I’ll edit and apologize if some proof is put down, but, again, I don’t think your actual point is diminished, regardless. Also, sick Parks and Rec reference.
Here’s the charge sheet. I think general orders in this context are service-wide instead of local orders.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24436357/ocr_pedicini-charge-sheet-referred-original_redacted.pdf