Maj. Gen. William T. Cooley, Jr., former head of the Air Force Research Laboratory, will be the first Air Force general officer to face court-martial, on a sexual assault charge, Air Force Materiel Command said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., commander of AFMC, acting as the Court-Martial Convening Authority, referred Cooley to stand trial on one charge<\/a> of sexual assault with three specifications, under Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The charge stems from an Aug. 12, 2018 off-duty incident in which Cooley \u201callegedly made unwanted sexual advances by kissing and touching a female victim,\u201d who is not a military member or Department of Defense employee, AFMC said in a press release<\/a>. The incident took place in Albuquerque, N.M.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cooley, in a statement released through his attorney after his Article 32 hearing<\/a> in February, maintained that the allegations against him are false, he has cooperated with the investigation, and he expects to be exonerated. AFMC noted that \u201cjust as in civilian criminal proceedings, Cooley is presumed innocent until proven otherwise by competent legal authority.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bunch relieved Cooley of command<\/a> of AFRL on Jan. 15, 2020, following an investigation by USAF\u2019s Office of Special Investigations. Pending further investigation, Bunch assigned Cooley as his special assistant, \u201cwith duties focused primarily on advancing the command\u2019s Digital Campaign,\u201d AFMC said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a comprehensive review of the evidence gathered by OSI and in an Article 32 preliminary hearing, \u201cI\u2019ve informed Maj. Gen. Cooley of my decision to move his case to general court-martial,\u201d Bunch said in a statement released by AFMC. \u201cI can assure you this was not a decision made lightly, but I believe it was the right decision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bunch appointed Lt. Gen. Donald E. \u201cGene\u201d Kirkland, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, to independently review all evidence in the case and recommend \u201can initial disposition decision.\u201d In November, 2020, Kirkland preferred the one charge of sexual assault<\/a> with three specifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Article 32 hearing was convened on Feb. 8, 2021, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. AFMC likened the hearing to \u201ca civilian grand jury,\u201d during which a senior military judge was appointed to review the charges and testimony to determine if \u201cprobable cause existed that the accused committed a UCMJ offense,\u201d the command said. This preliminary hearing officer \u201cproduced a written report with his disposition recommendation\u201d to Bunch, AFMC said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Air Force will identify a senior military judge and \u201ccoordinate timing and venue for the court-martial proceeding.\u201d The jurors will be fellow officers who must either be of higher rank than Cooley, or equal in grade but with earlier date of rank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prior to Cooley, the case coming closest to the court-martial of an Air Force general officer was that of former Gen. Arthur Lichte, whose last post was as commander of Air Mobility Command. In February 2017, Lichte was reduced from four stars to two<\/a> in retirement, reducing his retirement pay. The previous December, then-Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James reprimanded the retired Lichte in a publicly released letter, in which she said he would have been court-martialed except that the five-year statute of limitations had passed. Lichte retired in 2010 but the investigation of the case<\/a> did not begin until 2016. James found that Lichte coerced sex from a subordinate, and he was reduced to the grade at which he last performed satisfactorily. The sexual incidents took place when he was a lieutenant general and four-star general.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maj. Gen. William T. Cooley, Jr., former head of the Air Force Research Laboratory, will be the first Air Force general officer to face court-martial, on a sexual assault charge, Air Force Materiel Command said. Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., commander of AFMC, acting as the Court-Martial Convening Authority, referred Cooley to stand trial on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/image-9.png?fit=675%2C450&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11631,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11628\/revisions\/11631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}