Sailor Found Guilty of Fake Heroics
Virginian-Pilot | January 24, 2008
A Navy hospital corpsman who claims he rescued six Marines and recovered the bodies of four others during an ambush in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom was convicted Wednesday of wearing ribbons he did not earn.
A judge dismissed the more serious charges of forging documents that led to the awards.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Dontae L. Tazewell was found guilty of 10 of 11 counts of wearing unauthorized ribbons. Some of the honors recognized Tazewell for hero-ism during an ambush on March 28, 2003, earning him the Purple Heart and Bronze Star in July 2006.
On Wednesday, Tazewell's supervisors and others testified at his court-martial that the rescue never happened, painting a picture of a sailor so desperate to stay in the Navy that he concocted honors he did not merit.
Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Mann, who served with Tazewell as part of Marine Wing Support Squadron 272 in Kuwait in 2003, testified that, on the day of the supposed ambush, he knocked Tazewell down while running to tell of a helicopter accident on the runway of Joe Foss Expeditionary Airfield. That put Tazewell in Kuwait and not in Iraq.
"I don't see how he could get a Purple Heart for getting run over by a big guy," Mann said.
Alejandro Lira, a retired petty officer first class who also supervised Tazewell on that deployment, told of reading about Tazewell's award ceremony in a magazine, calling the reporter and asking that she "look into it."
"We have kids dying out there every day, receiving these medals posthumously," he testified. "I just thought it was wrong."
Garry Baker, who oversees Navy promotional exams, testified that Tazewell learned in May 2006 that he had not scored high enough to make petty officer second class, because of his evaluations, his award points and the competition that round. Because of his time in the service, he would have to leave the Navy.
Soon after, Tazewell told his supervisors and Baker that his last command had sent him award certificates, including the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Tazewell also noted that several of the evaluations used for his promotion score should have been excluded. After recalculations, Tazewell was promoted.
Under cross-examination by Tazewell's attorney, Navy Lt. Matthew Cutchen, Baker said Tazewell would have been promoted based on the revised evaluation score, without the new awards. It was unclear whether Tazewell knew that at the time.
In summer 2007, Tazewell brought his supervisors paperwork for more awards, but Senior Chief Petty Officer David Short testified Tuesday that the content and format, including Tazewell's own typographical quirks, were suspicious. By September, he was under investigation.
After the prosecution rested, Cutchen asked that Tazewell's forgery charges be dismissed because the government failed "to present evidence of legal harm to the Navy."
"What the command did of its own volition" in choosing to honor Tazewell, he argued, "is not a liability."
Cutchen also asked that the charges of wearing unauthorized ribbons - particularly the Purple Heart and Bronze Star - be dismissed because Tazewell merely received the award certificates from his old command and sent them on. Tazewell's supervisors told him to report to a ceremony where he received the awards, Cutchen said, thereby "authorizing" him to wear them.
Prosecutor Lt. j.g. Allison Ward said Tazewell's actions harmed the award system's integrity.
"Successfully duping your command into giving you awards does not authorize you to wear them," she said.
The judge, Navy Capt. Patricia Battin, dismissed the eight forgery charges. She declined to dismiss the 11 charges of wearing unauthorized ribbons. She did not give a reason for either decision.
In closing, Ward argued that Tazewell knew leaving the Navy would mean losing access to the extensive medical care he'd had since returning from the Middle East. Along the way, he made himself a hero.
"This is what stolen valor looks like," she said. "This is not what a hero looks like."
In closing, Cutchen argued that "we tell our sailors if something doesn't make sense, see their superiors." For Tazewell, this meant showing the award certificates to his supervisors, who took it from there.
After the hearing, Cutchen said Tazewell "sincerely apologizes to those who may have been offended by his actions," and he planned to "stand tall" during his sentencing, which begins today. Tazewell faces up to five years in prison and a bad-conduct discharge.
When asked whether Tazewell was ever in Iraq, Cutchen said he was, accompanying a convoy.
When asked whether he saved any Marines, Cutchen declined to answer, because of the pending sentencing.
