United States v. Specialist SHERWOOD REED

CourtArmy Court of Criminal Appeals
DecidedDecember 3, 2025
Docket20240321
StatusUnpublished

This text of United States v. Specialist SHERWOOD REED (United States v. Specialist SHERWOOD REED) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Army Court of Criminal Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Specialist SHERWOOD REED, (acca 2025).

Opinion

UNITED STATES ARMY COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS

Before MORRIS, POND and JUETTEN Appellate Military Judges

UNITED STATES, Appellee Vv. Specialist SHERWOOD E. REED United States Army, Appellant

ARMY 20240321

Headquarters, 7th Infantry Division Robert E. Murdough, Military Judge Lieutenant Colonel Sean P. Fitzgibbon, Special Trial Counsel

For Appellant: Lieutenant Colonel Autumn R. Porter, JA; Jonathan F. Potter, Esquire; Major Robert W. Rodriguez, JA; Captain Jessica A. Adler, JA (on brief).

For Appellee: Colonel Richard E. Gorini, JA; Major Vy T. Nguyen, JA; Major Austin L. Fenwick, JA (on brief).

3 December 2025

This opinion is issued as an unpublished opinion and, as such, does not serve as precedent. JUETTEN, Judge:

Appellant assaulted his wife, a by striking her with the back of his hand during an argument in their apartment. The niece of appellant’s wife, who also lived in the apartment intervened to separate appellant and his wife, but appellant pushed and pulled out of his way. Appellant then assaulted his wife again by punching her while she was on the phone with emergency dispatchers. Based on these acts, appellant was charged with three specifications of domestic REED — ARMY 20240321

violence,' in violation of Article 128b, Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 928b [UCMJ].?

A military judge, sitting as a general court-martial, subsequently accepted appellant’s plea of guilty to those three specifications. In accordance with a plea agreement, the military judge sentenced appellant to a bad-conduct discharge, 180 days of confinement,’ and a punitive reprimand.

Appellant now raises one assignment of error: that his separate convictions for assaulting his wife are multiplicious and in violation of the protections against Double Jeopardy afforded by the Fifth Amendment. We disagree.*

BACKGROUND Appellant assaulted his wife twice, and once, one afternoon in December 2023. Appellant, his wife, and , who resided with appellant and

his wife, were gathered in the primary bedroom of appellant’s home where he was playing a multi-player video game with others online. At some point, appellant’s wife began trying to speak with appellant, who ignored her and referred to her as a “b****” over his headset to other online game players. This prompted appellant’s wife to approach appellant, remove his headset, and ask appellant to repeat what he had said. Appellant responded by slapping his wife acr ce with the back of his hand. Immediately after appellant slapped his vite ll in between

' Appellant was also charged with three more specifications of domestic violence alleged on different dates, for a total of six specifications, in violation of Article 128b, UCMJ. However, those three specifications were dismissed pursuant to a plea agreement.

was “related by marriage” to appellant, and resided with him and his wife. As such, she was an “immediate family” member of appellant. Manual for Courts- Martial, United States (2024 ed.) [MCM], pt. IV, { 78a.c.(4); Executive Order 14,026, 87 Fed. Reg. 4,764 (January 26, 2022). We also note that she was appellant’s legal dependent at the time of the charged misconduct.

3 Appellant was sentenced to 60 days of confinement for striking his wife’s head with his hand (Specification 4 of The Charge), 30 days of confinement for pushing and then pln his immediate family member (Specification 5), and 180 days of confinement for striking his wife on the head with his fist (Specification 6), to be served concurrently.

* We have given full and fair consideration to the matter personally raised by appellant pursuant to United States v. Grostefon, 12 M.J. 431 (C.M.A. 1982), and determine it warrants neither discussion nor relief. REED — ARMY 20240321

[them] as a way to separate [t ir.]” to prevent the situation from escalating. Appellant “decided to move [ out of the way by pushing and pulling her... .” so that he could “be closer to [his wife]” as “[a]t the time, [he] was still

in a rage, and [he] didn’t want anybody getting between [himself] and [his wife]... .” “[R]ight after...” appellant succeeded in moving he punched his wife’s head. Appellant acknowledged that the described assaults occurred in the same spot in his home and within “a couple of seconds, a couple of minutes” of the others.

Prior to appellant’s guilty plea, where the above information was elicited, appellant moved to dismiss either of the specifications pertaining to his wife on the grounds that they were multiplicious. The military judge deferred ruling until after findings were entered.

After finding appellant guilty of the three specifications of domestic violence, the military judge turned to the tabled multiplicity motion. Citing to this court’s prior decision in United States v. Clarke, 74 M.J. 627 (Army Ct. Crim. App. 2015), pet. denied 74 M.J. 459 (C.A.A.F. 2015), defense counsel argued appellant had been convicted of a “continuous course of conduct” offense for which only one conviction could stand. The military judge asked the trial counsel if the two assaults were “connected in impulse,” to which the trial counsel provided a partial answer, “the intent was the same. I’ll grant you that.” Trial counsel countered that the offense of domestic violence constituted a specialized assault, for which the appropriate unit of prosecution was each individual blow and, additionally, that the modality of harm for the pertinent specifications was different.*> The trial counsel’s argument included that “[t]his was not an uninterrupted act.”

The military judge denied appellant’s motion. In doing so, he found persuasive dicta in an unpublished opinion, United States v. Malone, ARMY 20230151, 2024 CCA LEXIS 217 (Army Ct. Crim. App. 23 May 2024) (mem. op.), suggesting Article 128b, UCMJ, offenses were akin to specialized assaults in which each touching or strike within a continuous course of conduct could be charged as a separate offense. Relying on the unpublished opinion in Malone, the military judge concluded:

The two strikes inflicted on Bans that form the basis for Specifications 4 and 6 of the charge as found guilty in this case, are factually dissimilar from the type of assault described in Clark[e], which was an uninterrupted attack united in time, circumstance, and impulse. Specifically, in this case, the attack was interrupted by the intervention of

> However, the government acknowledged that appellant’s “intent [behind the slap and punch] was the same.” REED — ARMY 20240321

a third party who ended up becoming a second victim. This interruption provided the accused an opportunity to withdraw, yet instead, he began the attack anew. Finding that the applicable unit of prosecution in this case is the separate strikes, the defense’s multiplicity motion fails.

After appellant’s trial, this court sitting en banc reversed the panel decision the military judge found persuasive. United States v. Malone, 85 M.J. 573 (Army Ct. Crim. App. 2025).

LAW AND DISCUSSION

This court reviews preserved challenges for multiplicity de novo.® United States v. Paxton, 64 M.J 484, 490 (C.A.A.F. 2007). In determining whether charges are multiplicious, this court will look to both “the factual conduct alleged in each specification and the providence inquiry conducted by the military judge at trial.” United States v. Pauling, 60 M.J. 91, 94 (C.A.A.F. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted).

The issue of multiplicity before us concerns whether “the government [has] charge[d] a defendant twice for what is essentially a single crime.” United States v. Forrester, 76 M.J. 479, 484-85 (C.A.A.F. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted).

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