Aviano airman gets nine months in drug case

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Aviano airman gets nine months in drug case
By Kent Harris, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, January 27, 2008

AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy — An airman first class assigned to the 31st Security Forces Squadron pleaded guilty to marijuana charges and was sentenced to nine months in prison in a special court-martial that ended Friday.

The military judge, Maj. Jennifer Cline, sentenced Jerel E. Mitchell to a reduction in rank to E-1 and a bad-conduct discharge.

Mitchell is one of more than a dozen airmen based at Aviano to face punishment for illegal drug use in recent months.

Most of them have been security forces members who faced summary courts-martial, in which airmen generally receive lighter punishments.

Mitchell, who admitted to using, possessing, introducing and distributing marijuana at Aviano and elsewhere, was tried in a special court-martial because he entered into a pre-trial agreement under which he agreed to a guilty plea in return for a lighter sentence.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51963