Commander Convicted for Affair With Junior Officer

A veteran Navy commander was found guilty Friday of disgracing the Navy’s “officer and gentleman” code by living with a woman lieutenant on a remote Indian Ocean island and of lying to a superior about the affair.

A court-martial panel deliberated less than 90 minutes after a weeklong trial before finding Cmdr. James Wyatt III, 40, guilty on one charge of lying to a superior and guilty of violating a regulation that prohibits a married officer from living with an unmarried woman. He was found innocent of two other charges of lying.

As a result of the love affair with an intelligence officer under his command, Lt. Etteinne Boatwright, 24, Wyatt could be drummed out of the Navy, demoted, lose his pension rights and be sentenced to as much as a year and four months in prison.

Lived Together on Island

Testimony at the trial showed Wyatt spent some nights at Boatwright’s apartment while the two served in the same squadron at Moffett Field, Calif., in the last half of 1983. Both officers also testified they lived together in a trailer during a six-month deployment last year on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

The officer’s attorney expressed bitterness over the verdict, saying that if the Navy is going to pick on one man for living with a woman, it should clean up a lot of other “dirty linen” by prosecuting officers who use prostitutes and “shack up” with female officers.

Question of Involvement

A Navy spokesman said the court-martial was not about love or personal relationships but about whether a junior officer in a unit should be romantically involved with a senior officer.

Navy prosecutor Lt. J. H. Hohenstein said the issue was not whether Wyatt was in love with Boatwright, but whether he deceived his commanding officer when questioned about their personal relationship.

Wyatt conceded during the proceeding that he had “made an error in judgment” but said he had not intended to deceive his superiors.