How do I respond to a GOMOR to a general officer memorandum of reprimand?
The first advice I can offer when people ask me that is you need to be very careful when you respond. You also need to be very mindful of who is your audience. In addition to the general officer who issued the reprimand, certainly being your audience, because ultimately it’s that individual is going to make the call in the determination about where to file your reprimand or whether even to rip it up. You also need to be mindful of the fact that in processing your response matters, your chain of command is going to receive them, all echelons of your chain of command will read them and then decide based off of your response and based off of the totality of the evidence against you, what is their recommendation to that general officer. The other third piece of advice that I would offer to anyone asking how to respond to a GOMOR is that they need to be mindful.
You need to be mindful of where this is headed. What are the short term strategies? And also what are the long term strategies in all likelihood, if this reprimand is filed in your official record? You are going to be facing potential administrative separation or elimination in colloquial terms, getting fired from your job in the military, depending upon how you respond to that GOMOR. At that initial stage can very much impact the avenues of defense and strategy that your attorney is going to have in the event. And that very likely event that you’re going to be facing separation. So when responding to a GOMOR , you need to be very mindful of who is your audience and what is that long term strategy? Because it very often ends up when firms like mine come behind the fact to try to assist in ensuring that member gets retained. Now we have this decision made for us in terms of strategy based off of how the reprimand was responded to. So how do you respond to a letter of reprimand or a GOMOR exceptionally carefully and mindful of the audience and mindful of long term strategy.
Jocelyn Stewart is a UCMJ court-martial attorney who specializes in defense of allegations of sexual assault for all branches of the military worldwide.
Contact the Law Office of Jocelyn C. Stewart at 1-888-252-0927.
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