Ask the Lawyer: If it’s cruel and abusive, it’s hazing - Military Law, Military Law Advice, Ask a Lawyer - Navy Times

Ask the Lawyer: If it’s cruel and abusive, it’s hazing

Lawyer Mathew B. Tully answers your questions.

Q. When does acceptable behavior cross the line and become hazing under the Uniform Code of Military Justice?

Ever since videos of Marines punching, shoving and rubbing golden jump wings into the chests of new paratroopers were aired on the national news in 1997, military leaders have drawn a hard line between acceptable behavior and hazing.

They have banned the “blood-pinning” ceremonies depicted in the videos, along with other brutal and demeaning rites of passage, such as the “blood stripe” that newly promoted corporals were given by their peers who kneed them up and down the thigh.

Nevertheless, the military’s zero-tolerance position on hazing has not completely eradicated the practice. For example, the Army last June disciplined a staff sergeant in South Korea after he pleaded guilty to hitting new soldiers on their legs with his knees, elbows and fists as part of an initiation process into his platoon.

Marine Corps Order 1700.28, issued in the wake of the 1997 videos, defines hazing as any conduct whereby any service member causes any other member to suffer or be exposed to an activity that is cruel, abusive, humiliating or oppressive.

Examples identified by this order include any form of initiation or congratulatory act that involves physically striking another to inflict pain, piercing another’s skin, verbally berating another, encouraging another to excessively consume alcohol, or encouraging another to engage in illegal, harmful, demeaning or dangerous acts. Soliciting or coercing another to participate in any such activity is also considered hazing.

The Army has similar rules, outlined in Army Training and Doctrine Command Regulation 350-6 and Army Command Policy AR 600-20.

While some instances of hazing are as easy to identify as the marks they leave on victims, verbal or psychological offenses are not as black and white. For example, in 2007 three Marines based in Yorktown, Va., were charged with hazing subordinates after making them stand in formation for five hours and perform cleaning duties to the point of exhaustion, without food or sleep.

Hazing-related violations are primarily punishable under Article 92 of the UCMJ for failure to obey an order or regulation, and Article 93 for cruelty and maltreatment. However, service members also can be disciplined under several other articles, such as those for assaults, attempted assaults and conspiracy.

Mathew B. Tully is an Iraq war veteran and founding partner of the law firm Tully Rinckey PLLC. E-mail questions to askthelawyer@militarytimes.com. The information in this column is not intended as legal advice.