Judge says Navy must release records related to sailor acquitted of USS Bonhomme Richard arson

SAN DIEGO (CN) — A federal judge in California Thursday sided with the nonprofit news organization ProPublica, ordering the U.S. Navy to produce records of military court proceedings relating to a sailor who was accused but acquitted of starting a fire that destroyed a billion-dollar ship in 2020.

U.S. District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz ordered the Navy produce the records by April 30 following a contentious debate over the disclosure of the military’s criminal court proceedings.

The hearing came after Moskowitz handed ProPublica a major win in the yearslong court case in February when he ruled the Navy must provide public access to the sailor’s court hearings and records.

The Navy filed an emergency motion to block the judge’s decision, asking to hold off on releasing the files for 60 days pending appeal.

Moskowitz, a Bill Clinton appointee, again ruled in favor of the nonprofit news organization, saying the Navy can proceed to redact portions of the records that it deems necessary, but denying its motion to stay his previous decision.

“I’d say that’s a win,” ProPublica attorney Sarah Matthews said outside of the courthouse.

Had Moskowitz ruled in favor of the Navy, the court case could have dragged on for another year or longer before the records were released.

ProPublica argues the military’s court records over the prosecution of its service members are shrouded in secrecy when they should be subject to public scrutiny.

“I think it’s critically important in democracy to know who is being prosecuted and why,” Matthews told Courthouse News. “We don’t have secret courts in this country.
It’s so important for us to know that someone’s even being prosecuted.”

ProPublica has been seeking military court records regarding former sailor Ryan Mays after a fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard in July 2020.

The Navy zeroed in on Mays, then a 19-year-old who had recently dropped out of the SEAL school, as a culprit. According to ProPublica, Navy prosecutors relied on eye-witness accounts of Mays aboard the ship the day that the fire started.

Mays was accused of aggravated arson, but he was acquitted in September 2022.

ProPublica filed a lawsuit against the Navy shortly before Mays’ acquittal in an effort to get more court records, including Mays’ preliminary court proceedings, known as Article 32 hearings.

“What would happen is someone would just disappear from their troop, and nobody would know why,” Matthews said of the military’s First Amendment practices. “So how can we make sure that the courts are being fair and our service members are given a fair trial?”

There were also claims that Mays was being scapegoated for a military catastrophe caused by broader command and safety failures and that the prosecution was targeting him for political reasons, but the public had no way to evaluate those claims because the records remained secret, Matthews said.

Navy attorneys argued many things in the Article 32 hearings are not in the public interest and contain thousands of pages of documents. Additionally, they objected to releasing records from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

“This record is 6,000 pages long,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Glover-Rogers said of the Article 32 hearings. “It has law enforcement materials. I am hard pressed to think that’s appropriate and subject to disclosure at this time.”

The Navy attorneys also accused ProPublica of trying to gain more ground in the fight for public records by nitpicking over which records should be unredacted.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on the appropriateness of redactions,” Glover-Rogers said. “ProPublica continues to expand its argument and micromanage the summary judgment. Implementation should be left to the Navy.”

But Matthews said that the public should have access to these court proceedings so that it can hold the military accountable for potential mismanagement of court proceedings.

“We aren’t asking the court to micromanage,” she said. “We are asking that the Navy be held under the same First Amendment standard like any other criminal court.”

The fire aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard completely destroyed the ship, which was undergoing repair in San Diego.