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About Military Enlistments: Just Asking

By SusanUnPC on November 10, 2007 at 9:45 PM in Soldiers/Veterans

“Killer joined Army to avoid murder rap.” I saw this headline at the Army Times site, clicked, and began to read that the killer was sentenced to life in prison — having skimmed past the part of the first paragraph that said “home from basic training” — and clicked away. Then, I stopped and went back to the story. Surely this killer didn’t actually get into the Army, did he? He did. HOW, I ask. How?

CINCINNATI – A man who joined the Army to avoid murder charges but was arrested by police while home for Christmas from basic training has been sentenced to life in prison.

Hamilton County Common Please Judge Robert Winkler on Friday sentenced David Crawford, 23, of suburban Norwood, to life in prison for the 2004 murder of William Wilson, 22.

According to prosecutors, Crawford twice shot Wilson in the head in September 2004, thinking Wilson had double-crossed him during a drug deal. Police found Wilson’s body dumped in northeast Cincinnati. Investigation in the following months led detectives to make Crawford a suspect.

Meanwhile, Crawford joined the Army and attended basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., Prem said. When Crawford returned to a relative’s Anderson Township home for Christmas dinner, detectives arrested him on murder charges.

Crawford withdrew a plea to lesser manslaughter charges that could have brought a 17-year prison sentence.

The military is this desperate that they don’t do a simple background check that would have shown that this man was charged with murder?

Now, I don’t know much about how the military vets its applicants, but surely they do a simple criminal check. No?

  • Michael Lafferty

    In all fairness to the Department of the Army and the Department of Defense, they could not have known of the arrest of David Crawford until…

    • he was actually indicted and declared a fugitive—had he left the jurisdiction—or
    • was actually arrested for this or some other offense.

    The Department of the Army and the Department of Defense do perform background checks on applicants for enlistment, including FBI fingerprint comparisons of applicant cards submitted against criminal cards on file. Such records do not exist until a suspect is arrested, if cards are not already on file.

    It could be that David Crawford had an extensive criminal record prior to his enlistment, or it that he had no record at the time of enlistment, or even after that date but prior to his eventual arrest. It is not likely that the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense could have known in advance that he was an unidentified or identified suspect, nor could they have handled this matter in any other way than they apparently did.

    • http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

      Thank you for the explanation. I don’t wish to cast blame where none exists, but it did worry me.

  • Montag

    Susan,
    It’s called “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.” The worst part is that when/if the guy gets out of prison they’ll have raised the enlistment age so many times that he’ll STILL be eligible to serve.

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  • Katea

    No lie, my sister dated David in high school, so this story kept me on my toes.

    David wasn’t actually arrested for it before he joined the military.