The Conspiracy widens.

The conspiracy widens. You cannot put together an operation of this size and scope without outside help. Van Sice was not alone. Wisniewski was not his only co-conspirator. His legal advisor was a major player. A non-lawyer would not adroitly disregard the recommendations of the Article 32 Investigating Officer without getting legal advice from someone. That had to be CDR Sean Gill. Senior Coast Guard Officers all tend to approach their lawyers with the same attitude. They say “Don’t tell me what I cannot do. Tell me how to do WHAT I want to do!”

The cost alone would indicate that Commandant (G-L) and Commandant (G-P) were onboard. The degree of coordination needed to bring all of the parties to the Academy at the precise time would require knowledge and cooperation from a host of Headquarters level units.

This was more than a conspiracy. This was a strategic policy . That would mean this was a Coast Guard policy decision. That is frightening. When he court-martialed Webster Smith, Van Sice was not breaking ranks with main stream Coast Guard policy makers; he was in perfect lock-step. He had been given clearance to court-martial a cadet, a Black cadet. He must have felt that he was on solid ground. It seems a bit bizarre that the first three cadets singled out for court-martialing were all Black, and all football players. One at the Coast Guard Academy; one at the Air Force Academy; and, one at Annapolis.


Navy Cadet Lamar Owens.



Compared to what Van Sice and Wisniewski did, Webster Smith deserves the Coast Guard Good Conduct Metal. Webster Smith committed a few college pranks. Van Sice and Wisniewski eviscerated the Honor Code concepts. They coached witnesses to lie. They tampered with witnesses, exerted unlawful command influence, they abused their discretion and they misused the legal process.

Coast Guard cadet Webster Smith




This would partially explain WHY Van Sice, as the Convening Authority, exhibited complete and utter disdain during this entire fiasco.
The cost would not be prohibitive, since there appears to have been some thought given to making it self-funding. If you bill the convicted cadet about $100,000.00 that would pay for most of your expenses. You could call it reimbursement for his Academy education. Make the family pay.
In China when a convicted criminal is sentenced to be executed, he is tied to a chair in a stadium and killed with a bullet to the brain. The government charges the cost of the bullet to the family of the executed criminal. They make the family pay. Who is more enlightened?
The Secretary of the Navy is not as enlightened as one would have hoped. He has overruled the Annapolis Superintendent, Admiral Rodney Rempt, and he has ordered that Cadet Lamar Owens must repay $90,000.00 for his training. He has the nerve in the face of a cry in some quarters for reparations for the descendents of the African slaves, to ask the sons and grandsons of slaves and sharecroppers to repay more than the entire family makes in five years. In many cases Black college students today are the first in their families to even go to college. The Secretary of the Navy, Donald C. Winter, is needlessly grandstanding.




This is a flea-flicker play by the Navy Secretary, but there is a great counter play. You see, Lamar Owens won a lot of games for the Navy; and, he filled a lot of seats. Also, he had one of Washington, DC’s best Super Lawyers representing him at his court-martial. Lamar Owens would do well to get his “million dollar baby” attorney, Reid Weingarten, to sue Annapolis and the Naval Academy Alumni Association for a percentage of the proceeds from all of the football games that he played in, and for the concessions and parking and souvenirs and the free publicity that he generated as their star quarterback. He was exploited. He was used. Annapolis did not do him any favors. They pursued him. He earned more money for Annapolis and the Navy than he was allocated to pay for his marginal education.

On the day the star female witness was giving her testimony, a senior officer from the Academy was in Washington appearing before a Congressional sub-committee chaired by Christopher Shays on the subject of Sexual Assaults against women at the nation’s military academies. That is too much of a coincidence.

Webster Smith has filed an appeal, claiming that several errors were made during his court-martial last summer. One of the key points in the appeal filed April 13 is a claim that a key witness, Shelly Raudenbush, a female cadet, had previously falsely claimed sexual assault against a Coast Guard enlisted man to avoid discipline.

The primary charges on which he was convicted stemmed from a series of sexual encounters with, Shelly Raudenbush, a classmate, in her dorm room in October 2005.

The appeal claims Smith's lawyers weren't allowed to question or cross examine Shelly Raudenbush about her allegedly false sexual assault accusation.
Limiting cross-examination, the appeal says, denied Smith his constitutional right of confronting his accusers, "of showing, through cross-examination, that Shelly Raudenbush had lied before under similar circumstances and that she had a motive (indeed the same motive) to lie again."

Also, the defense lawyers were not allowed to question Shelly Raudenbush about consistent pattern of romantic infidelities beginning in high school and continuing to the present. The defense could have called any of her old boyfriends that she proved unfaithful to. The defense could have called Doug Genna or Marvin Kierstead, among others.



Van Sice and Wisniewski played the news media like a violin. They held press conferences. They gave out pictures of Cadet Webster Smith. When they had gotten a conviction on a minor charge, they paraded Webster Smith in front of the cameras like a prize trophy.

After his kangaroo court-martial, Cadet Webster Smith was immediately taken to the U.S. Navy brig at the Submarine Base in Groton, Connecticut on 28 June 2006. He should have been granted an 8 day deferment of the sentence. This is normally a routine thing. However, this was not a routine case, by any means. Even the vilest military convicted offender is given some time alone with his family to say good-bye. Webster Smith was not. Webster waited in a secure room under double security guards while his written Request for Deferment was presented to Admiral James Van Sice. The Admiral sat in his ivory tower with Commander Sean Gill, his military advisor, and drank coffee. Then he summarily denied the routine request without any justification whatsoever. This has never been done before. Admiral Van Sice received bad advice from his legal advisor.
As soon as Van Sice's signature was on the denial order, two flat-footed agents from the Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) ordered Cadet Smith's parents to vacate the premises. Mild mannered Webster Smith was handcuffed and paraded up and down the corridor like Jesus being paraded between Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate for all the rabble to gawk and marvel. Poor Webster Smith was made a spectacle. Thoroughly humbled and suitably constrained, he was offered for inspection to Kristen Nicholson and Shelly Raudenbush, the two principal witnesses against him. This was after they had gotten a chance to hug the Prosecutor. I am told that Kristen was the first one to give him a big hug. Then, still in handcuffs, Webster Smith was paraded in front of the news media for a photo opportunity. It was a Kodak Moment. This was a sort of victory dance for the Prosecution and the Convening Authority. This was cruel and inhuman punishment. This was truly a new low even for the likes of James Van Sice. This single act more so than preferring groundless charges shows clearly the character of Admiral James Van Sice. He is not only a rabid racist, and a confirmed bigot, but he is also just plain mean spirited.

While on vacation I was surfing the internet news and came upon a story about the court-martial of a cadet at the Coast Guard Academy. It was news. It was in the newspapers, but when I called CG Headquarters, I was told that they did not know anything about it. I called 3 times. I spoke to a LCDR in the Legal Office (G-L) and a LT in the Office of Personnel (G-P). Both gave me the same story. They did not know anything about a Court-martial at the Academy. If they were at Headquarters, then they could not be so far out of the loop that they did not know about the trial at the Academy. So, obviously the information black-out was on. If you did not know, then you did not “have a need to know”. So all inquiries would be met with the same answer.
Everyone at Headquarters from the Commandant on down to the lowliest Admiral’s driver had to know. This must have been the Coast Guard’s dirty little secret. Any one who did not agree, or who was not a major player, simply kept his mouth shut.
The Superintendent’s Legal Advisor, Cmdr Sean Gill must have been a party to the conspiracy. He had to be at the center of it. He was the Convening Authority’s principal legal advisor. And he had to coordinate with Headquarters, Military Justice Division and the Office of Personnel. There had to be general acquiescence of every Department Head at CG Headquarters. The Coast Guard was going to be the first military service academy to court-martial a cadet for sexual assault against a female cadet. This was a policy decision, just like the decision to be the first to admit female cadets was a policy decision. I was a part of that. It took months of planning and meetings and coordination.

DAY OF JUDGEMENT FOR WEBSTER SMITH.

Those who were not present on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at the

United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (USCAAF)

450 E Street, Northwest

Washington, D.C. 20442-0001

for the oral arguments in the case of United States v. Webster M. Smith, Case No. 08-0719/CG, missed a real burn burner.

The judges of the USCAAF are civilian judges and sit as a single panel on all cases. Typically, all five judges participate in each case. The judges came out firing questions fast and furious to the two Appellate Attorneys. The first one up was Counsel for Webster Smith: Ronald C. Machen, Esquire. He was prepared and completely unflappable. He responded to every question put to him. When he was interrupted in mid sentence, he did not forge on and try to finish his thought; he immediately responded to the Judge's question. He gave reasoned responsive answers to every question. Some judges fired hard ball questions, and one judge even offer up a soft-ball question which was answered in the same serious manner.

Then came Counsel for U S Coast Guard: LT Emily P. Reuter, USCG. She had a cold or was recovering from the Swine Flu and began by pleading for leniency because of her weakened voice. It was downhill from there for her. She did not appear to give responsive answers to most of the questions put to her. She may have not even clearly understood some of the question before she attempted to respond to them. Frequently she appeared to retreat to her notes or her brief and read the holdings from cases that she had cited in her brief. Perhaps this was her first time arguing before the court or maybe this was a case that no one else wanted to argue, but there surely was not her finest hour.


This was an appeal from a General Court-Martial (GCM) conviction for going from place of duty, attempting to disobey an order, sodomy, extortion, and indecent assault. The ISSUE on Appeal was whether the military judge at the court-martial at the Coast Guard Academy violated Webster Smith’s constitutional right to confront his accusers by limiting his cross-examination of Shelley Roddenbush [SR], the government’s only witness, on three of the five charges.

Counsel for each side was allowed 20 minutes to present oral argument in the case.


The judges of the USCAAF are Judge Andrew S. Effron is the Chief Judge. The other four judges are Judge James E. Baker, Judge Charles E. “Chip” Erdmann, Judge Scott W. Stucky, and Judge Margaret A. Ryan, the most recent appointee.

The first issue that they tackled was the jurisdictional issue. The Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals had denied a request for reconsideration on 14 May 2008. It was not clear whether this was in the Appellate Record. There was a question of how many days had elapsed from the notification of the denial to Webster Smith's attorney and the date that Attorney Machen filed his appeal to the USCAAF. The Coast Guard had sent the Notice of Denial via DHL, a German company, rather than simply using the U. S. Mail as required by the Rules of Court. Apparently there are two time periods that may be relevant under Article 67(B) of the USCAAF's Rules. One is a 61 day rule and the other is a 95 day rule.

They kept coming back to this jurisdictional issue again and again. I do not think they hammered it out definitively during the hearing. Webster Smith's attorney said that it is not in the Record that he was notified on 14 May. LT Emily P. Reuter for the USCG said that it was in the Record. I am sure the USCAAF judges will settled the issue before they issue a decision.

This is troubling because I would hate for the judges to dodge the ISSUE on Appeal because of a technicality like jurisdiction. I could hear a couple of the judges contemplating doing just that. The tone and the tenor of the questions leads me to just that conclusion. It would be a shame after all this time and effort to be cheated out of a hard and definitive decision on the ultimate ISSUE.

That being said, it is my reasoned opinion that the judges of the USCAAF are poised to reverse the conviction of Webster Smith. I feel there is better than a 60-40% chance that they will reverse the conviction by a majority vote. also, there is a 51-49% chance of a unanimous decision.

I think Judge Ryan is a swing vote. She gave Attorney Machen the hardest time. If at all possible she might do like Judge Lane I. McClelland of the Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals and uphold the status quo. However, I do not think she would go out on a limb and write a dissenting opinion. If the other four judges split 2-2, I think she might side with the judges who determine that a reversal is warranted because the Trial Judge abused his discretion and committed reversible error.

Judge Baker appears most eager to reverse this conviction because Webster Smith was denied his right to a fair trial. He sees this as a fair trial issue. He believes that the trial court members had a right to know what the secret was that SR wanted Webster Smith to keep, that it was of a sexual nature, that she had recently lied about it being nonconsensual when it was really consensual oral sex with an enlisted man in Norfolf, Virginia. Also, SR wanted Webster Smith to go out and lie for her so badly that she was willing to pay him with sexual favors.

Judge Baker feels this was crucial evidence that the members were entitled to know. The exact nature of the secret was crucial to Webster Smith's defense. The Trial Judge relied upon Rule 412 of the Military Rules of Evidence and allowed into evidence only the fact that Webster Smith was privy to a secret that SR wanted him to keep; and that secret concerned something that could ruin her cadet and officer career in the Coast Guard.

Even though Judge Baker is a civilian, he might have served in the military. He pointed out that there are lots of secrets that can harm one's career. It could be a secret concerning having failed a physical training exercise; or, it could be a secret involving a wardrobe or a uniform violation. The members had no way of knowing the precise nature of the secret since the trial judge protected SR from more rigorous cross-examination. They did not know that when SR was faced with rumors she lied to limit her own culpability. Giving a limiting instruction to the members was not sufficient to cure the error. It was more than harmless error. It was big, earth shaking, reversible error. It violated the Sixth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution.

As Attorney Machen so eloquently stated, SR had used the secret as a sword and a shield. It shielded her from testifying at the Article 32 investigation, and it was the sword that she used at trial to stab Webster Smith through the heart. It killed him and his career in the Coast Guard. It is what the judges referred to as the Theory of Innoculation. The secret had innoculated SR from two investigations. It saved her from testifying at the Article 32 Investigation.

LT Emily P. Reuter wanted to argue that this was not a Fair Trial issue, but it was a pattern or practice issue. As such the Trial Judge was correct to limit cross-examination of SR to stop any evidence from coming in concerning her prior sexual history or her propensity to tell lies. She argued that the Defense's Theory of the case at trial was wrong for the evidence that they were trying to elicit, and that the Trial Judge correctly used Rule 412. If he erred, it was no more than harmless error. It was not Reversible Error. She was not persuasive.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again. The essence of truth in this case is finally coming to the surface. From where I sit, the USCAAF stands ready to right a gigantic wrong. It wants to reconsecrate the Temple of Justice in the Coast Guard. It wants to heal the wound that was inflicted on the Sixth Amendment by the trial court and the Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals.