95th SFS NCO convicted of Adultery Published June 16, 2010 By Air Force Flight Test Center Judge Advocate Office EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- A technical sergeant assigned to the 95th Security Forces Squadron was convicted by Special Court-Martial June 11. A panel of seven officers found him guilty of committing Adultery and he was sentenced to a reduction in rank to senior airman and 90 days of hard labor without confinement. "Typically, Adultery is charged as an additional, lesser offense in a court martial where there is more egregious conduct like Assault," said Senior Airman Melissa Lugo-Velez, the case paralegal. "However, this conviction demonstrates that any charged offense under the UCMJ can be a stand-alone charge at court-martial." Adultery, an offense under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, is charged when two requirements are met -- that a military member engages in sexual intercourse with another person while either one of them is married to another; and that the sexual intercourse needs to also have a negative impact on good order and discipline or be considered service discrediting. In this case, the accused was married, but separated from his wife. In the military, a person is considered either single or married - for criminal or administrative actions, legal separation has little to no relevance. Additionally, the accused was the supervisor of the husband of the woman he had an affair with. These factors fulfilled the requirements that prosecutors, Captains Michael O'Brien and Nicholas Peterson, needed to prove in order to meet the burden of proof. Maj. John Harwood, the Senior Defense Counsel from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., was the defense attorney for the accused in this case. Major Harwood was successful in his defense by getting an acquittal on a single charge of dereliction of duty at trial.