A Marine colonel whose conviction for sexually abusing a 6-year-old was appealed has been released from prison and is awaiting a decision on his retirement.
Col. Daniel Wilson, 58, was sentenced in September 2017 to 66 months in prison and dismissal from the Marine Corps for sexually abusing a child, six counts of conduct unbecoming an officer, and one count of unauthorized access.
But because of a rare appellate provision, a three-judge panel overturned Wilson’s charge of sexually abusing the girl in July but reaffirmed his other convictions, meaning that the disgraced colonel will not have to register as a sex offender.
Instead of a resentencing hearing, Wilson and the Marine Corps came to an agreement that he would be freed and allowed to request retirement.
“The convening authority agreed that on the date of the Secretary of the Navy’s final approval of Wilson’s retirement request, in lieu of a sentence rehearing, the convening authority will approve ‘no punishment’ on Wilson’s General Court-Martial,” Major Melanie Salinas, a communications director told the Marine Corps Times on Wednesday.
A court-martial conviction will still remain on Wilson’s record, which is similar to a federal conviction.
The panel found that the witness in the case, the girl he was accused of abusing, was unreliable, with the court writing in its opinion that the victim “was inconsistent in non-trivial ways that cannot solely be attributed to her young age.”
The move stems from the court’s ability to use a provision in the Uniformed Code of Military Justice known as “factual supremacy powers” to overturn his conviction. Factual supremacy allows an appellate court to review the trial and act as a final arbiter on whether the guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt during the proceeding.
The family of the victim is calling on Congress to strip the factual supremacy power from the UCMJ, a power that does not exist in most civilian courts.
“At the newly turned age of 7, she bravely and courageously took the stand in a military court of law, in order to tell the jury members of her sexual abuse in the best possible way she knew how,” said the victim’s mother in October.
In 2016, Wilson was stripped of his role as the officer in charge of a forward coordination element for the Marine Rotational Force-Darwin in Australia. The charges of conduct unbecoming of an officer stemmed from his time in the country. He reportedly made sexual comments to another officer’s wife and sent profane Facebook messages to a female officer.
