A special court-martial for a former Parris Island drill instructor has been canceled and the Marine has received administrative punishment instead, according to Training and Education Command.
TECOM is not saying what type of administrative action was taken against Staff Sgt. Jose Lucena-Martinez, who is one of four drill instructors accused of making recruits exercise in an abandoned, dusty building nicknamed "The Dungeon."
Information about such punishments is rarely released to the media, "because the public interest in the routine administrative disposition of employee misconduct rarely outweighs the individual's privacy," according to the Manual of the Judge Advocate General.
Brig. Gen. Kevin Iiams, head of TECOM, approved a pre-trial agreement with prosecutors under which Lucena-Martinez avoided a special court-martial, for which the maximum sentence that service members can receive is one year in prison, forfeiture of up to two-thirds of monthly pay for a year, a bad conduct discharge and reduction in rank to E-1.
"Staff Sgt. Lucena-Martinez will not be permitted to return to work as a drill instructor," TECOM said in a statement on Wednesday.
The cases for two of the other drill instructors involved have already been resolved. Sgt. Riley R. Gress was found not guilty of all charges on May 25. Staff Sgt. Matthew T. Bacchus was sentenced to 60 days' restriction on June 7 after pleading guilty to maltreatment and violation of a lawful general order. He was found not guilty of making a false official statement.
Staff Sgt. Antonio Burke faces a general court-martial slated to begin Aug. 7 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, in connection with charges of cruelty and maltreatment, failure to obey a lawful general order and making a false official statement.
In addition to making recruits exercise in "The Dungeon," Burke is also accused of making a recruit change his Facebook password so Burke could contact one of the recruit's sisters. Burke allegedly made the recruit call another of his sisters so that Burke could ask her out for drinks.
Separately, Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Felix is accused of slapping Muslim recruit Raheel Siddiqui right before Siddiqui ran across the squad bay and jumped to his death. Felix faces a general court-martial slated to begin on Aug. 8 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, on charges stemming from that incident and an earlier one, which he is accused of ordering another Muslim recruit to sit in a dryer and then turning it on while taunting the recruit about his religion.
Sgt. Michael Eldridge is slated to appear before a general court-martial starting Sept. 24 at Camp Lejeune for charges in connection with the dryer incident.
