HIV-positive Navy priest gets 2 years for sex crimes

His face covered with a jacket, Lt. Commander John Thomas Lee is escorted out of the courtroom on Thursday, Marine Corps Base Quantico.


HIV-positive Navy priest gets 2 years for sex crimes
By Andrew Tilghman and Chris Amos - Staff writers
Posted : Thursday Dec 6, 2007 20:31:31 EST

Quantico, Va. — An HIV-positive Catholic Navy chaplain was sentenced Thursday to no more than two years in the brig for sexual misconduct with several men including an enlisted Marine, an Air Force officer and two Naval Academy midshipmen.

Military judge Col. Steven Day had recommended that Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Matthew Lee serve 12 years in prison and ordered him dismissed from the Navy. Lee admitted to coercing a midshipman — who is now an ensign — into having sexual relations with him, convincing a Marine corporal to take nude photographs of him during a counseling session, and to knowingly exposing an Air Force lieutenant colonel to the HIV virus after he met that man on the Internet. The relationship with the second midshipman — who is also now an ensign — was consensual, and the two lived together.

But Lee, who could have faced a life sentence without the possibility of parole if the case had gone to trial, had all but two years of his sentence suspended under the terms of a plea agreement, which was negotiated in the weeks before Lee’s general court-martial.

With time for good behavior, Lee, 42, will serve about 19 months in a military brig, defense attorney David Sheldon said after the hearing.

Sheldon said prosecutors traded a relatively light sentence for information that only Lee could provide about the identity of people he potentially infected so they can be notified of their exposure and tested.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/12/navy_leechaplain_guiltyplea_071206w/