A Marine who was detained in connection to the death of a dependent in Hawaii is still in confinement this week, service officials told Military.com on Thursday, but no charges have been filed nearly a month and a half after the incident.
The dependent died on Sept. 1 aboard Marine Corps Base Hawaii, or MCBH, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service began an investigation into the incident with the Honolulu Police Department.
The Marine was detained in connection to the death, but the service has released few details about the incident, including information such as the Marine's name, rank or relationship to the dependent who was found deceased.
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On Thursday, a spokesperson for the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing told Military.com that the investigation was ongoing and that no charges had been filed, but did not answer questions about the Marine's background, including the unit the service member was in at the time of the dependent's death.
"Since the last time we spoke there have been no updates about this incident," 1st Lt. Isis Coty, a spokesperson for 1st MAW, said in an emailed statement on Thursday in response to questions from Military.com. "The Marine is still in confinement, and no charges have been filed. [The] Naval Criminal Investigative Service is still investigating the incident at this time."
Military.com contacted NCIS and the Honolulu Police Department on Friday afternoon for information. The publication was not able to reach HPD. NCIS confirmed that the investigation remains ongoing and that no charges have been filed as of Friday.
"Out of respect for the investigative process, NCIS will not comment further at this time," said Meredith March, a spokesperson for the law enforcement service.
Retired Marine Lt. Col. Gary Barthel, founder of the Military Law Center and a lawyer with years of experience in both military and civilian legal cases, told Military.com in a phone interview on Friday that in instances such as this, law enforcement has to balance the integrity of the investigation with public transparency.
"They don't want to jeopardize their investigation," Barthel said. "It's not unusual in the military or even the civilian sector that when an offense is under investigation, law enforcement is usually not going to talk about what information they've recovered or where they are in their investigation because ... there may be witnesses that they interviewed or other witnesses that they have yet to interview, and if they start making comments about the investigation and the facts and circumstances, it may have an impact on the credibility of the information that they get."
Barthel said that for the case involving the detained Marine and a deceased dependent, investigators want to make sure "they've got all their ducks in a line" before they make charges.
He also said that while the military and civilian systems differ in some ways -- such as there is no bail program in military law, for example -- defendants are still meant to be afforded a speedy trial. For the military legal system and under the rules for court-martial, the government is usually required to bring somebody to trial within 120 days from the time they are put in pretrial confinement, he said.
Barthel said that typically if the government is communicating with the courts to show that they are doing their due diligence in collecting evidence, "the court is going to be reluctant to find that they're in violation of the speedy trial."
Some of the evidence that the government may be collecting in this case could be forensic in nature, Barthel said.
"In a case like this, they could be relying or waiting for forensic results to come back from some forensic test," he said. "It could be DNA ... if a weapon was used, it could be gunshot residue, it could be a number of things," to include toxicology reports or other evidence "that's going to help the government make their case ... but sometimes those things take time."
That said, Barthel noted, once the investigation is complete and charges are filed, the military should be transparent with the public about information about the case.
"And so that's where the rub is, I think," he said in regard to public and press access to information -- hearings and charge sheets, for example -- on the case, once those criteria are met. "There's no reason in my mind that the military cannot or should not provide that information."
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