A military court of appeals on Friday dismissed the final convictions against two Marine Raiders embroiled in a yearslong legal saga stemming from the 2019 death of a Green Beret veteran working as a contractor in Iraq, ending a winding chronicle that rattled the military justice system.
The Marines, along with Navy Chief Petty Officer Eric Gilmet, were accused of causing the death of retired Army Master Sgt. Rick Rodriguez, who died days after one of the Raiders punched him outside of a bar in Irbil, Iraq, in what defense attorneys argued was an act of protection.
Gilmet's case was dismissed in 2023. And last year, a military jury found the two Marine Raiders -- Gunnery Sgts. Daniel Draher and Joshua Negron -- not guilty of their most severe charges: involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty.
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But the jury did find Draher and Negron guilty of violating a lawful order: drinking in theater. The jury did not recommend any punishment with the decision, but an attorney for the Marines told Military.com on Monday that the conviction carried the weight of a felony, meaning that it would follow them into their civilian lives, prohibiting them from owning firearms and restricting their right to vote in some states, for example.
On Dec. 27, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the drinking convictions "with prejudice," meaning that the ruling is final, and while the government can still file an appeal in the coming days, the Raiders' attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, a Marine veteran, thinks that's unlikely.
"It was a substantial case that lasted an extraordinarily long time; it's over though," Stackhouse said. The lawyer noted that there are still lingering "collateral consequences" stemming from the case that they plan to pursue, such as correcting the Raiders' discharge records and recouping pay or promotions that they missed out on as the case dragged on for years.
But nearly six years after the deadly bar fight, "their records are clean," Stackhouse said. In a social media post announcing the dismissal, he wrote: "And the MARSOC 3 are free."
A spokesperson for Marine Special Operations Command, or MARSOC, told Military.com in an email Monday that the command is aware of the dismissal of both cases.
When asked whether the Marine Corps intends to appeal the dismissals, the spokesperson, Maj. Johnny Henderson, said: "The decision whether to appeal is governed by the [Uniform Code of Military Justice] and pertinent regulations. At this time, MARSOC cannot comment on whether there will be further proceedings in this matter."
New Year's in Iraq and an 'Earthquake' of a Case
On New Year's Day 2019, Gilmet, Draher and Negron, dubbed the "MARSOC 3," as they had become known, were in Irbil celebrating. They had arrived at the bar in the early morning hours and, at some point, Rodriguez, a 45-year-old contractor, Green Beret veteran and father of four who had already been drinking at the bar, said hello to Gilmet, placing his hand on his back in what appeared to be a friendly manner.
According to security footage shown at the trial, Rodriguez then became aggressive with Gilmet before being restrained by bouncers and kicked out of the bar.
The MARSOC 3 encountered Rodriguez outside the bar minutes later. While the footage is grainy, it appeared that Rodriguez poked Draher in the chest and then moved his head toward the Raider. Draher then pushed Rodriguez, who in turn appeared to punch Draher in the face several times.
In what the defense argued was an effort to protect Draher, Negron punched the Green Beret veteran, sending him hard onto the ground on his head. The group did not immediately take Rodriguez to the hospital and instead left him with Gilmet, a corpsman, to tend to him. That morning, Rodriguez stopped breathing; he was pronounced dead days later in a hospital in Germany.
The case garnered significant media and congressional attention, but within military justice circles was seen as "an earthquake of a case," Gilmet's attorney, Colby Vokey, a Marine veteran, told Military.com on Monday. And part of the reason it was so profound and rattling to the military justice system was because of something called unlawful command influence.
Before Gilmet went to trial, a top Marine judge advocate, Col. Christopher Shaw, influenced Gilmet's right to a defense counsel by "creating the perception in the minds of Appellant's defense counsel that their future in the Marine Corps would be jeopardized if they continued to zealously advocate for Appellant," according to an opinion delivered by Judge Liam Hardy last year.
Shaw told a group of military defense attorneys that they "may think they are shielded, but they are not protected" from outside influences, according to testimony referenced in the opinion, a statement that defense attorneys in the room -- including the one who was representing Gilmet at the time -- interpreted as meaning their careers would be jeopardized if they continued to defend their clients ardently.
The statement proved to be a turning point in the saga, and Shaw's words reverberated throughout the Defense Service Office, or DSO, subsequently tainting the case for years.
As a result, Gilmet's case was dismissed in August 2023. And given that the two Marine Raiders were cleared by a jury months before of involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty, they'd hoped the drinking conviction -- a comparatively minor crime that other service members who stood witness at the trial also admitted to but were not punished for -- would be commuted.
But the then-commander of MARSOC, Maj. Gen. Matthew Trollinger, decided not to dismiss that conviction, marking the duo as felons and limiting their ability to make a living in their civilian lives off of the weapons skills they learned in the service, among other restrictions.
Speaking generally of the military justice system, David Gurfein, the CEO of United American Patriots, an organization that raised awareness, lobbied with Congress and raised money in support of the MARSOC 3, told Military.com that, "even if they get off the most serious charges, there's always one lesser charge that's thrown in to make sure that the military gets their pound of flesh."
Of the unlawful drinking convictions, he said, "That felony conviction means that their whole professional lives of being professional war fighters, being competent in handling firearms and training others in the use of firearms -- that whole next step in their life where perhaps they would be able to monetize that and be able to make a living for their families -- now that was cut off to them."
But the specter of Shaw's words returned on Friday. In dismissing Negron's and Draher's drinking convictions, the presiding judge cited "unlawful command influence" as tainting the proceedings, referencing Shaw's "pernicious" remarks.
"It is difficult to conceive of a more sophisticated, premeditated, and ruinous assault on a load-bearing pillar of military justice -- the independence of the military's defense bar from unlawful command influence," the opinion of the court said. "This case ably demonstrates why unlawful command influence remains the mortal enemy of military justice."
Stackhouse, the Raiders' lawyer, said that the MARSOC 3 would have still been cleared of the most serious charges, but if "Shaw would have never went to Camp Lejeune and never opened his mouth once ... I think the result would have been [that] all three would have been convicted of drinking in Iraq. That's it. Not guilty of everything else."
United States v. Gunnery Sgt. Daniel Draher
Before New Year's Day 2019, Draher felt that his time had finally come. He joined the Marine Corps following 9/11 and, after nearly 20 years in the service, he'd participated in a bevy of deployments, had been wounded in combat and earned the Purple Heart. Things were looking up: He was due for promotion, his wife was pregnant, and he was going to take on new leadership roles within MARSOC.
"I was this big, bright shiny object, and within a couple seconds, which turned into a couple days, then all of a sudden, I was nothing, and I was a problem and they needed to get rid of me," he told Military.com in an interview Monday. "But I was still a human being and still had sacrificed all the things that I had sacrificed leading up to that point, and I had a family at the end of the day," he said.
Draher said that, in the six years his case worked its way through the military legal system, often hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, he was "getting beat down." His reputation tarnished, he was stripped of a security clearance and special pay for elite operators doing dangerous jobs, and his command isolated him, he said. He lost friends, though some of that was for the better, he added.
"You can go from one to the other, like a flip of a light switch. And I think that there's a problem with that," he said. "I was good enough for the Marine Corps to say they wanted to promote me, and within minutes, they were looking at everything they could do to get rid of myself and my two other mates. There's definitely some problems. I hope that we highlighted some of those problems, and I hope that they can start to work on some of those problems."
When he heard the news that the final conviction tied to the case had been dismissed Friday, he almost didn't believe it at first. What's next? He's not sure. One step is trying to scrub the adverse comments relating to misconduct in his discharge paperwork. He could have been a master gunnery sergeant by now, two ranks above what he retired at, he said.
With the felony-equivalent conviction dismissed, Draher said he can live his life "without limits," and possibly take advantage of the skills he learned in MARSOC, such as using his weapons training to make an income, adding "that opportunity was taken away from me, and maybe now I got it back so I can figure out something to do with that."
"We still don't get that time back," he added.
Draher said that he had always been passionate about the institutions he was a part of, especially MARSOC. But he ended up having to look at his legal case as a battlefield.
"I never would have thought that I'm now viewing my enemy as the United States Marine Corps or the United States government," he said. "Because I stared at a piece of paper for well over five years that said ... 'United States v. Gunnery Sgt. Daniel Draher.' That's a heavy thing to sit with, especially with all of the stuff that we've been through and all the sacrifice -- not just that I made, but collectively -- that everybody made."
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