<p>Actually, two news sources that won’t cover this story will be:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>NPR (don’t miss Feinstein’s great essay on Navy football though, and ‘A Soldier’s Heart,’ book preview by West Point English professor)</p></li>
<li><p>The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on Public Television</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Civil court - other than rendering Ronan penniless - suing him for all he is worth, who else would be involved?</p>
<p>Ronan - probably isn’t worth all that much - a couple hundred thousand - certainly not millions… after the attorneys and the money being split among the victims it really won’t amount to much.
Maybe not enough for a high-priced lawyers to waste time with.</p>
<p>In cases like this, the punishment will not end with his release from the brig. If you rob a bank or beat someone within an inch of death, after you serve your time, you leave prison as an ex-con. Yes you leave with a record, have requirements to meet, but your name isn’t added to every local database in the country as a sexual predator, nor is it accessible by anyone with a PC and internet access. I have to believe Ronan will leave jail and pick up a level 3 sex offender status. That status will impact where he can live, how he will be received and the jobs he can hold. It will most certainly bring with it a host of issues that will impact his life in a negative way. As a doctor and an educated professional his time in jail time may prove to be the easiest part of his punishment to deal with.</p>
<p>Just kinda thinking out loud… but will Ronan get sex offender status?</p>
<p>I don’t know exactly how it works, but will him receiving that “status” be hampered by the fact that he was not convicted by a civilian court, or that the charges that he was convicted are not sex related per se (wiretapping, conduct unbecoming, and obstruction of justice.)</p>
<p>You raise some good questions and you may very well be right. The issues around a military trial and his convictions for the offenses mentioned may not map into the civilian world of law, particularly when it applies to sex offender status.</p>
<p>Civil litigation would probably be a total waste of resources. The plaintiffs would most likely end up with an empty judgement that they would never be able to collect. You can’t get blood out of a turnip. The Goldmans won a judgement against OJ Simpson; all they received was the satisfaction of winning a case and the opportunity to ride his a$$ for the rest of his life.</p>