Gunmen attack Fort Hood, Texas

[jmm99]

I agree with your technical legal reasoning:

The defendent should be ordered to shave and if not, a charge added to the court martial for failure to obey an order from his commanding officer.

and also that, when a commander defers what should be his or her decisions to his or her lawyers, IMO: the lawyers have a fool for a client.

But, you wouldn't seriously prefer a charge for failure to obey a shaving order if you were his CO, would you ?

I mean, the guy is faced with a baker's dozen of death penalty charges. An added charge for failure to obey an order would be meaningless to what happens to him on the capital charges - and would itself be a diversion.

Ironically, this SOB could have avoided the whole shooting spree by simply refusing the order to deploy to a Muslim country (his initial stated reasoning against the deployment order). He then would have been prosecuted for failure to obey an order, where the sentencing guidelines would have been relatively generous.

No, instead he decided to be a jihadist, etc - for reasons that had to go well beyond his initial stated reasoning.

Regards

Mike