A Little Rock Air Force Base airman lost his stripes Friday and was ordered to jail for a month after being found guilty of assault for whipping his stepdaughter with a belt and an extension cord, but the military court stopped short of kicking him out of the service.
Airman 1st Class Gary Mizell had two stripes on his sleeve when his court martial began Wednesday. When it concluded around 7 p.m. Friday, he was reduced to airman basic, a rank known as a “slick sleeve,” for its lack of insignia as the lowest rank in the Air Force.
The nine-member panel of Air Force officers and enlisted personnel from the base found Mizell guilty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice of “assault consummated by a battery upon a child under the age of 16.”
The charge carries a maximum of two years’ confinement with options of hard labor, loss of pay and benefits, and dishonorable discharge.
When the panel president - the equivalent of a jury foreman in a civilian trial - read the sentence, Mizell’s wife Jennifer raised her hands in the air at the back of the courtroom at 19th Airlift Wing headquarters and exclaimed, “Yes! ... Whew!” Mizell was visibly relieved as well.
Mizell will return to duty at the 19th Equipment Maintenance Squadron upon conclusion of his one-month jail term.
Court documents stated that Mizell has a recurring brain tumor controlled by costly medication.
The charges against Mizell stemmed from a whipping Mizell gave his 10-year-old stepdaughter Kayla on Feb. 27 when he thought she had lied to him about why she had Saturday detention at school.
Mizell dropped her off at detention that Saturday and “I told her I was going to get her about that lying s***,” he said.
That evening, Mizell ordered the girl to take off her pants, leaving on her underwear, and lie on the floor of their home.He stood over her and hit her repeatedly with his belt. Mizell told police he planned on giving her “21 licks,” but every time she moved, he started the count over.
When the belt broke, Mizell grabbed a nearby extension cord and continued hitting her on her back, buttocks and thighs.
Jennifer McDaniel Mizell had also hit her daughter with the belt before Mizell got home that night.
Jennifer Mizell was charged May 3 with second-degree domestic battery. She pleaded guilty to the charge July 15 in Pulaski County Circuit Court and received five years’ probation and a $1,000 fine. A nocontact order is a condition of her parole, as are parenting classes. Neither she nor Mizell is allowed contact with her two children.
The girl’s injuries were discovered at school March 1, when she was having problems sitting.
Katie Lann, the school nurse, testified that Kayla complained of pain and asked for help getting her underwear off.
The cotton underwear was stuck to the wounds on her buttocks. Lann told the court she cut Kayla’s underwear off and found two open wounds and numerous marks across the girl’s back and legs.
“Those wounds, that was done through clothing,” said Capt. Wes McDonnell of Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., one of the prosecutors. “She had her underwear on, and the belt tore away her skin.”
The defense focused on the rights of parents to discipline their children. The law specifically allows for spanking with a belt, as explained to the panel by the military judge, Lt. Col.William Muldoon of Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.
“Most parents don’t want their parenting methods questioned,” McDonnell said. “But there are times the law must step in. This is one of those times.”
The defense argued that the wounds were not deep cuts, but minor injuries from loss of a layer of skin, pointing out that she was treated with Band-Aids and triple-antibiotic ointment.
“He was attempting to discipline her,” said Maj. Jennifer Jones of Barksdale Air Force Base, La., one of Mizell’s defense attorneys. “He gave her a whoopin’.”
In an unsworn statement before the sentencing phase of his court martial began, Mizell asked the panelists to understand that he was trying to do the right thing under exceptional circumstances.
He told the court about his frustration with the girl’s lying and failing grades and how he was still trying to find his way as a new stepfather.
He said he met his wife in 2008 while vacationing in Mississippi, and they wed less than four months later. He moved her and her two children to Little Rock Air Force Base where they settled into base housing. Jennifer Mizell had been a teenage mother, and the fathers of her children are both in jail.
“Every man who had come into [the children’s] lives had abandoned them,” he told the court. “I didn’t want to do that.”
Mizell said he stuck by his wife even after she was arrested and sent to jail on prostitution charges stemming from incidents that occurred before they met. He helped her get her General Educational Development diploma and enroll in college classes. Mizell said he took his stepson for additional testing when the boy’s developmental delay became chronic and found the 8-year-old had Fragile X syndrome and the mental capacity of a 3-year-old.
But his stepdaughter’s defiance and lying continued to vex him.
“I’m truly sorry for failing as a father,” Mizell said, “but I truly don’t want this affecting my family for the rest of our life.”
After an hour and a half deliberation - about the same time it took to determine a verdict earlier in the day - the panel took a mix of the prosecution’s and defense’s advice on sentencing.
Capt. Craig Austin, a prosecutor from Little Rock, recommended to the panel that Mizell be stripped of rank because “No one should have to look up to him for what he did.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 20 on 10/24/2010