Responding to GOMOR and LOR - General Officer Memoranda of Reprimand and other Letters of Reprimand

How to respond to a General Officer Memoranda of Reprimand (GOMOR) or Letter of Reprimand (LOR). Attorney Jocelyn Stewart practices military law. www.ucmj-defen...
If you have participated in the investigation through counsel, you have responded to derogatory findings. Sometimes when you get to this point, it can feel like everything that you've done up until this point has been all for nothing. Maybe you didn't do any of those things because maybe you received really deficient legal advice.
Whatever the circumstance, you can start fresh and it's not hopeless. If you are responding to the letter of reprimand, the main thing that you're trying to go for is that this letter should be ripped up and destroyed or at least filed in your local file.
A local filing essentially has the effect of not going with you, not following with you on a follow-on command, a follow-on assignment. It effectively goes in the round file that we call the garbage can.
In order to get there, you have to determine whether or not there is actual substantiation or any evidence that you committed the underlying misconduct. In addition to obtaining additional evidence and other sources of statements, affidavits, text messages, emails, whatever it's going to take to undermine the specifics of the allegations that are levied against you.
It's it's also going to be important, especially if you have not participated in the investigation or responded to the derogatory findings, to give yourself an actual statement of what it is that is your version of events. Is that the case in every case? Not necessarily, but in most cases, and that's always what we start off from the position of saying we start off from a position of saying that you should be providing a factual accounting of what happened.
We do that through a very carefully documented and very carefully crafted sworn affidavit that we make a part of the record as part of our overall strategy. Realize that we're not only dealing with the near term, right?
That's the audience that's right in front of you, whoever it is that's the general officer or the flag officer or the Admiral who's issuing you this reprimand. They are your near-term audience. Understand that the recommendations of your lower level chain of command tend to hold a great deal of weight. So you also have to be mindful of them as your audience.
But as always, we're playing the long game and realizing that if it goes south to this point, and it often does, right, we are not here to tell you to be a used car salesman that we can make everything go away. Have we for some people? Certainly, but that's definitely not the norm. That's definitely not what we typically see.
So we're always bracing for that next step of what we have to anticipate again because we're playing that long game. If we are going to be facing down the barrel of an actual administrative separation board for enlisted or an elimination board for officers, then we also have to be mindful of the optics and that audience that we're going to be seeking to be persuasive of, which is the three board members who would be sitting on your board.
So crafting and doing legal analysis, providing our own independent evidence, making sure that you have your voice that's not only addressing the potential misconduct that you're being reprimanded for, but also making sure that we're mindful of all other potential layers of alleged misconduct that they could try to come after you for. I've seen it before.
We respond. You know, I've I've had to clean up these messes from other counsel. They respond to the the misconduct of the reprimand, but in doing so, they end up opening people up to other alleged misconduct.
I've actually seen reprimands like, "Oh yeah, you're right. We're going to rip you up on that one, but you pointed out that should have been this other issue. So now we're going to issue you a second reprimand for something else."
Make sure that you're choosing learned counsel who's always mindful of all of the potential issues, not only what's what in front of them, but what else could be out there. Make sure to follow us.
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Jocelyn Stewart is a UCMJ court-martial attorney who specializes in defense of allegations of sexual assault for all branches of the military worldwide.
Contact the Law Office of Jocelyn C. Stewart at ucmj-defender.com