Navy Dispenses a Swift Brand of Justice : Courts: Military handles fewer cases than the civilian system, but penalties can be harsh. Officers point to a lower crime rate.

The sailor was flushed and sweating despite the air-conditioning in Building 225 of the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme.

“Why did you throw them away?” demanded Capt. Fred Gerszewski, a Navy judge in crisp dress whites presiding over one of the two dozen or so courts-martial convened each year in Ventura County.

“I have no excuse, sir, I just made a mistake,” said Petty Officer Douglas A. Ebert Jr., charged with a crime that wouldn’t be prosecuted in civilian courts--throwing out more than $800 worth of mixed aviation screws that he was supposed to sort.

“Is that what you thought, deep in your heart of hearts, ‘I’ll throw this stuff away and nobody’ll mind’? “ the judge asked. He leaned forward beneath one of five microphones recording the sailor’s trial, his eyes narrowing. “Is THAT what you thought? Think about it. Tell me.”

“Yes, sir,” Ebert said, lowering his gaze to his white canvas sailor’s cap on the defense table.

Five minutes later the hearing ended--as do most Navy trials at Port Hueneme--in a prearranged plea. Ebert pleaded guilty to destruction of Navy property.

Gerszewski sentenced him to 60 days confinement to base, ordered him to forfeit $800 in pay and busted him down to the rank--and salary--of airman.

The Navy’s own harsh, streamlined brand of justice had been served.

Civilian defendants in Ventura County face elected and appointed judges and randomly chosen juries. Navy defendants taste justice at the hands of their fellow sailors.

Those convicted and sentenced in this special system can lose not only their freedom for the length of a prison term, but also their Navy careers forever.

As a result, Navy legal officers say, the crime rate is lower among the 8,800 sailors and soldiers under this court’s jurisdiction--at the Port Hueneme Seabee base, the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station, the China Lake Naval Weapons Center and the Santa Barbara Naval Reserve Center--than among the civilian population.

“I think what we see in our courts is very few hard-core criminals. We have very few repeat offenders ,” said Gerszewski, one of only 46 Navy officer-judges in the country, and the only judge to make regular monthly three-day visits from his base at Long Beach to the Port Hueneme branch of the Navy’s Southwest Judicial Circuit.

Penalties are sometimes stiff:

* A Point Mugu supply officer was discharged and sentenced last December to seven years in prison for stealing and reselling more than $100,000 in jet parts. He pleaded guilty, avoiding a 240-year maximum penalty. The Naval Intelligence Service is investigating other sailors’ roles in the theft.

* A Seabee petty officer who vanished from base for 30 days and tested positive for cocaine use pleaded guilty last month to drug use and the crime of U.A.--unauthorized absence, as the Navy now refers to AWOL cases.

Despite claims that superiors ignored his repeated pleas for drug counseling, he was judged unfit for continued service and sentenced to 45 days in the Navy brig at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, a two-thirds cut in pay for that time and a bad-conduct discharge.

A court-martial sentence often cuts deeper than a civilian sentence, said Keith Carter, a Ventura defense attorney who has represented Navy clients.

“In the military courts, they can restrict you to stay on base,” Carter said. “They can bust you in rank. They can take away your pay or your leave privileges, which could have a far greater destructive influence on somebody’s life than a weekend or a month in jail.”

“The long-term effect of being dropped in rank could take years” to erase, he said.

On base, Ventura County sailors live not by California law, but by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Like civilians, they can be tried for drug use and theft, sexual assault and murder.

Like civilians, Navy defendants are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to get public trials, free legal help if needed, protection from self-incrimination and the presumption that they are innocent until proven guilty.

And like civilians, the vast majority of Navy defendants plead guilty before trial to avoid suffering the maximum penalty when evidence against them is strong.

Of the 21 cases heard in Port Hueneme in 1991, 19 ended in pretrial guilty pleas and two in convictions at trial. So far this year, 13 courts-martial have been convened, ending in two acquittals, five pretrial guilty pleas and six convictions.

“By the time we get done beating on them, the stakes are so high it’s an in-and-out thing,” joked Capt. Thomas A. Morrison, commanding officer of the Naval Legal Service Office based in Long Beach, which oversees Navy lawyers in central Southern California. “The guy doesn’t want to try to beat a 35-year sentence.”

But while civilian courts struggle under huge caseloads and repeated delays, military judges handle fewer cases and do not tolerate excessive delays, say Navy and civilian lawyers. Last year, while the Navy was holding fewer than two dozen courts-martial, the Ventura County Municipal Court was trying to deal with more than 38,000 cases.

Trials of serious crimes in Ventura County Superior Court can last for weeks, even months. Courts-martial often take a few days. Navy sentencing hearings move even faster, often ending within hours.

“I think there’s more justice than in the civilian world because of the speed,” said Lt. Jonathan Thow, a Navy lawyer at Port Hueneme.

In civilian courts, Thow said, “it’s unfair . . . to be sitting around six, eight months to have your case heard, and during all that time it’s hanging over you.”

Civilian courts also require jury verdicts to be unanimous, while courts-martial juries of as few as three people can convict by a two-thirds vote.

Military jurors disagree with each other less than civilian jurors, further speeding their verdicts, said Dave Follin, a Ventura attorney who has practiced in the military court.

Navy jurors “have similar philosophies in life because their experiences are so similar,” Follin said. “If you have enlisted personnel and an officer on the jury, the enlisted personnel may wish to not displease the officer.”

But Thow said, “I really don’t think that the chain of command has the influence that it appears that it might. I think it’s a very fair system, and there are acquittals and light sentences for some cases that you might not see in the civilian world.”

Navy justice begins “before the mast,” in a meeting between the accused and his commanding officer. So-called mast hearings are held on ship or shore, over matters as slight as tardiness or serious as murder.

Commanding officers can investigate crimes without lawyers present and mete out discipline on the spot, such as assigning extra duties, stripping the sailor of rank or confining him to quarters for up to 30 days--up to three of which can be on a diet of bread and water.

“A guy who has a good record and screws up is generally given the benefit of the doubt,” said Lt. Cmdr. Derek Cole, legal adviser to the commanding officer of the Seabee base. “The C.O. says, ‘Look, I’ll give you a break’ ” and warns first-time offenders or lets them off with minimum punishment, Cole said.

If the charge is serious enough, however, the commanding officer must recommend the sailor for a court-martial, Cole said.

Most of these trials are special courts-martial, carrying a maximum penalty of only six months confinement. Serious offenses go to general courts-martial, which can render sentences as harsh as execution for crimes such as murder, mutiny and espionage.

Navy Investigative Service looks into the crime and issues a report to the suspect’s commanding officer, who forwards it to an independent hearing officer.

The hearing officer acts much like a grand jury, deciding whether the evidence is strong enough to forward to Adm. William E. Newman.

Newman, the commander of the Naval Air Warfare Center weapons division, reviews all potential trial cases at the four bases under his command and decides which ones go to courts-martial.

The suspect also can request a trial.

Petty Officer Glenn A. Grieve, a 29-year-old Seabee electronics technician, was charged with drug use last month after a urine sample with his name on it tested positive for traces of methamphetamine.

Claiming his name was attached to someone else’s sample, Grieve requested a court-martial before Judge Gerszewski.

The trial began in Building 225 with a military flourish, as the lawyers and judge read aloud the orders from their superiors assigning them to the trial.

With Navy defense lawyer Thow at his side, Grieve pleaded not guilty.

Testimony unfolded much as it does in civilian court, as witnesses described the day when more than 300 sailors in Grieve’s regiment went through a urinalysis sweep.

Grieve sat quietly with his jaw set as the prosecutor, Lt. Douglas Anderson, questioned the security monitor who had watched them urinate into bottles and the urinalysis coordinator who labeled the samples.

Thow cross-examined: “Is it correct to say that if you collected over 300 samples that day, you would not know the identity of one single officer?”

“Correct,” said the urinalysis coordinator.

“You don’t specifically remember Petty Officer Grieve?”

“Correct.”

Within 60 minutes, Anderson rested the prosecution’s case and Thow began presenting character witnesses on Grieve’s behalf.

“He is loyal, dedicated and has an attention to details with regard to what he’s been assigned to do,” testified Marine Master Sgt. Guadalupe Garza. “He is an invaluable asset.”

Then Grieve, the defendant, took the stand--an occurrence not as rare in courts-martial as in civilian trials.

The urine test that day was different from 10 to 15 others he had taken, Grieve testified, as his wife looked on. Steps seemed to be missing in the chain of custody for his sample.

When his superiors told him he tested positive, “I was shocked,” Grieve testified. “I wasn’t expecting it at all. I’ve never done drugs. I don’t do drugs.” Anderson argued in closing that Grieve’s name on the bottle, the intact seal and his signature on the custody log proved that he had used amphetamines. “There was enough to show in the chain of custody that this was his sample,” Anderson said.

Thow argued, “There’s no question that a bottle with Petty Officer Grieve’s name on it tested positive for methamphetamine. The only question is whose bottle it was. . . . Somebody popped, but the government can’t prove who did.”

Gerszewski withdrew to a back room, and emerged 10 minutes later with a verdict: “Petty Officer Grieve, the court finds you, of this charge and sole specification, not guilty.”

Grieve beamed, hugged his wife and rushed off to celebrate.

The number of drug cases in the Navy has decreased recently, thanks to continued random urine tests for all sailors, said Lt. Cmdr. Maynard Bowers, another Navy judge who sometimes sits at Port Hueneme.

“Our case numbers are relatively down,” Bowers said. “But the complexity of the ones we’re handling are for the most part increasing.”

The Navy now prosecutes cases of child and spousal abuse committed by sailors that once were left to the civilian courts. “If they didn’t have the time or the manpower or money to handle it, it didn’t get handled,” he said.

Theft is on the rise as the failing economy spurs more sailors to steal, although the crime “is one of those things that’s been going on since Capt. Bligh was a seaman,” Bowers said.

Gerszewski called larceny “a very serious offense” in the Navy.

While civilian thieves often get misdemeanor convictions and sentences of less than three months, Navy thieves face a maximum penalty of six months confinement, total forfeiture of salary and a bad-conduct discharge.

“You’re living aboard ship and all your worldly possessions are aboard a locker that’s smaller than a suitcase, and you have no privacy,” Gerszewski said. “Nothing can be more demoralizing than a barracks thief or a thief in the berthing spaces of a ship.”

Gerszewski also predicted an increase in the number of sexual-harassment cases, after several male Navy pilots who groped and harassed female sailors at the Tailhook convention last year were discharged from the service.

Most court-martial cases are not so serious, Gerszewski said.

“I sometimes joke with counsel, saying, ‘I now call this session of Juvenile Court to order,’ ” he said with a chuckle. “Sometimes we see these 19-, 20-year-old kids. They’ve done some real dumb things, like gotten into a fight in the enlisted men’s club over some girl, or gone U.A.”