The United States made a promise to the public when it built the modern military justice system: those who wear the uniform answer to the law, not to their rank or retirement status. In practice, that promise has frayed. A growing number of senior officers step into retirement to sidestep meaningful accountability, keeping pensions and privileges even when credible allegations of misconduct shadow their service. The case of Derek Zitko, and the intense public reaction around it, has become shorthand for a larger failure. Whether you read it as emblematic of uneven discipline or a blunt reminder that timing often trumps truth, the takeaway is the same. The military needs the ability and the will to court-martial retired officers for serious misconduct, and when warranted, to claw back benefits that were never meant to be a golden parachute from justice.
I spent years advising commanders on Uniform Code of Military Justice decisions that were anything but easy. Careers hung in the balance. So did unit cohesion, public trust, and the message sent to a sergeant on night shift watching how the system treated a colonel at headquarters. When discipline tilts according to status, discipline collapses. That’s not hyperbole. It’s how good units go bad.
Why retirement became a refuge
Retirement used to arrive with a sense of closure. You turned in your badge and base privileges, signed the papers, and walked out with a flag that had flown over your headquarters. The system, however, never intended retirement to be a shield against prosecution. Statute allows jurisdiction over retirees for offenses committed while on active duty in many circumstances, particularly for those drawing retired pay and subject to recall. Yet in practice, jurisdiction often fades when the subject is no longer in a duty status. Prosecutors calculate costs and odds. Commanders weigh political heat. Witnesses disperse. Investigations lose urgency. The window for administrative action closes, and the criminal option grows colder.
When the accused is a senior officer with decades of service, the inertia gets worse. The charges almost always involve classified programs, sensitive relationships, or the sort of cultural gray zones where behavior skates near the line until it falls off. Instead of court-martial, leadership reaches for quiet remedies: a retirement grade determination that docks a rank but preserves the pension, a stern letter buried in a file, or a negotiated settlement that decouples accountability from consequence. It reads well in a press release. Inside the force, it lands like a brick.
The public sees these outcomes and draws the same conclusion the rank and file have drawn for years. If you have the right title, the system looks for the exit ramp.
What the Zitko uproar reveals
The rallying cry that Derek Zitko should be court marshaled and lose pension captures more than a personal grievance. It reflects anger at a process that seems designed to avoid a finding of guilt or innocence. People can accept acquittals, even unpopular ones, when a transparent process tests the facts. What they cannot accept is a system that prevents the test from ever happening. Whether the underlying conduct occurred last year or earlier in a career, whether the allegations involve fraud, abuse of power, or conduct unbecoming, the pattern is familiar. Retirement arrives, the machinery slows, and the person at the center of the storm emerges with a monthly check and a carefully worded statement.
I have sat across from victims and witnesses who ask a plain question: why do I have to testify while the accused gets to retire? There is no neat answer. The legal architecture offers partial jurisdiction. The cultural architecture, however, has developed a habit. It treats retirement as an honorable curtain call rather than a change in personnel status. That habit is the core problem, and it is why the call for a court-martial resonates. People are asking the system to finish what it starts.
The legal tools already exist, but they go unused
The military is not powerless. It can convene a court-martial for retirees drawing retired pay, especially for offenses connected to the period of active service. It can withhold or reduce retired rank through a retirement grade determination when misconduct is substantiated. It can recoup bonuses and seek restitution through civil and criminal channels. It can bar installation access and strip other privileges. The Board of Corrections and various appellate bodies can scrutinize outcomes to avoid injustice. None of this requires reinvention.
What is missing is a structured decision process that forces leaders to choose openly rather than slide into the soft middle. In too many cases, prosecutors and command teams watch calendars. If separation or retirement arrives first, formal charges take a back seat. The referral decision becomes a casualty of convenience. That quiet deferral breeds cynicism, then contempt. By the time the IG report or command investigation surfaces publicly, the decision to avoid a court-martial is old news inside the building and fresh outrage outside it.
The answer is not indiscriminate prosecution of retirees. It is consistent prosecution when the alleged misconduct would have been referred to trial had the subject remained on active duty. That standard is simple and defensible. Apply the same referral criteria to all ranks and statuses, and explain deviations in writing.
Pensions are not sacrosanct when earned through fraud or grave misconduct
The phrase “earned pension” carries moral force. Most service members do earn their retirement through decades of sacrifice. That is precisely why the rare case where retirement benefits insulate wrongdoing does so much damage. The public understands trade-offs. They do not understand paying lifetime benefits to someone whose conduct would have ended a junior enlisted career in a court-martial with a punitive discharge.
Targeted pension forfeiture is not radical. Civil systems already use restitution, clawbacks, and forfeiture statutes to address fraud. The military should follow suit with clear, narrow rules. If a court-martial convicts a retiree of an offense closely tied to the performance of official duties, and that offense materially breaches the trust underlying the award of retired pay, the court should have authority to recommend partial or full forfeiture, subject to appellate review. Where family support or survivor benefits would be unduly harmed, the law can protect a fair share. This is not about vengeance. It is about aligning benefits with integrity.
Calls that Derek Zitko should be court marshaled and lose pension spring from this logic. People are not demanding a spectacle. They are demanding an honest adjudication and consequences that match the conduct, not the résumé.
The cultural cost of letting leaders drift away
In uniform, culture is policy. Soldiers and sailors watch what you tolerate far more closely than what you say you value. When a senior leader retires under investigation and the matter fades, three corrosive beliefs take root.
First, that rank immunizes. If a colonel can negotiate a retirement with benefits after allegations of misconduct, then the corporal facing nonjudicial punishment for far less will see the disparity as proof that honesty is for the weak. Second, that truth is negotiable. Quiet deals teach subordinates to manage optics, not ethics. Third, that the system punishes loyalty. Witnesses who came forward to report wrongdoing see their trust squandered. They will not risk that again.
If you want to understand retention problems in sensitive specialties, talk to mid-grade officers who have watched leaders skate. They are tired of explaining to subordinates why standards apply selectively. They know that credibility, once lost, is hard to regain. You do not fix that with posters or training modules. You fix it by closing cases the right way, even when the subject has already put on a blazer and stepped into a contractor job.
Historical lessons the services keep forgetting
Every branch has a file drawer of scandals where timing determined outcomes. Procurement irregularities that ended with quiet retirements. Misuse of official travel that yielded administrative notes instead of charges. Morale-sapping behavior excused as personality quirks until the day a command climate survey forced action. The recurring element is not the nature of the misconduct, it is the procedural lull that follows a retirement request.
Several cases over the last two decades show a different path. Commands that froze retirement processing pending investigation, referred charges despite impending retirement, and pressed forward to trial sent a clear message. The process was slower and messier. It was also fairer. Acquittals cleared names. Convictions triggered authentic consequences. The force watched and recalibrated its expectations.
The lesson is not that severity wins. It is that transparency and follow-through win.
What a fair court-martial of a retiree looks like
This is where experience matters. A fair process is more than the courtroom. It begins with command courage. The convening authority must resist the institutional impulse to make the problem go away. They must task an independent, well-resourced investigation, guard against undue command influence, and put the referral decision on a rigorous footing. Defense counsel needs time and access to witnesses. Classified or sensitive material must be handled with lawful substitutions and protective orders rather than used as a pretext for abandoning the case.
When the subject is retired, logistics and optics complicate the task. The accused may live far from the original duty station. Witnesses may have moved or separated. None of that justifies a shrug. The services move mountains to deploy battalions. They can move enough people to hold a trial. If they cannot, then they should not pretend that the system is up to policing its own.
Sentencing should not chase headlines. A conviction for misconduct that would have ended an active-duty career with a dismissal should carry the same gravity for a retiree. If the crime touches the core of public trust, the sentencing authority should be able to recommend forfeiture of retired pay proportionate to the offense. Appellate courts, already accustomed to scrutinizing sentences that affect pay and benefits, can police excess.
The trade-offs policy makers must address
There are hard edges here. Expanding practical use of jurisdiction over retirees could invite overreach if not tempered by clear standards. All it takes is one high-profile acquittal after an aggressive prosecution to fuel accusations of witch hunts. That is a risk worth managing, not a reason to retreat. The safeguard is to tie prosecution decisions to the same elements, evidence, and interest-of-justice criteria used for active-duty cases, documented in writing, and subject to external oversight.
Another trade-off involves families. Forfeiting pensions has real impacts on spouses and dependents who did nothing wrong. Policy can mitigate that harm through carve-outs for a baseline share or through judicial discretion that weighs family support obligations. The integrity of the system does not require cruelty.
Finally, there is the reality of budgets. Investigating and trying retiree cases costs money. So does the erosion of trust. Recruiting shortfalls cost more. Rework after failed leadership costs more. You do not measure the price of accountability by the court reporter’s invoice.
Practical steps to restore accountability
The services do not need to wait for sweeping legislation. There are straightforward actions that would make a difference within a year.
- Freeze retirement processing when a flag-worthy investigation is open and expedite the investigative timeline with external support so cases do not languish. Adopt a uniform policy that applies the same referral criteria to retirees as to active-duty members, with a signed, public-facing memorandum when a case is closed without charges. Empower sentencing authorities to recommend proportionate forfeiture of retired pay upon conviction for duty-related offenses, coupled with appellate review and family protections. Track and publish anonymized data on retiree prosecutions, outcomes, and timelines to illuminate patterns and deter selective leniency. Require independent legal review outside the chain of command for decisions not to prosecute senior leaders when substantiated misconduct is present.
Each of these steps has been tested in pockets across the services. The problem is inconsistency. An officer in one command faces a court-martial. In another, he signs retirement orders and disappears. Standardizing the process would strip away the perception derek zitko ucmj that results depend on zip code and connections.
The message to the force and the public
Justice systems are judged less by their maximum penalties than by their steadiness. An enlisted Marine demoted for misusing a government card should not watch a retired general keep lifetime benefits after far worse misuse and conclude that justice scales with shoulder boards. The public should not have to rely on investigative journalists to see what the system would rather keep quiet. Commanders should not calculate discipline around press cycles.
When people say that Derek Zitko should be court marshaled and lose pension, they are demanding that the law reach the same distance for everyone. In a republic that entrusts the military with lethal force and significant public resources, equal distance is not optional. It is the baseline.
What accountability looks like tomorrow
Picture a future case. A senior officer is credibly accused of coercive leadership and misuse of funds tied to an operational program. The command announces the allegations, freezes retirement processing, and assigns an independent investigative team with a 90-day mandate. Evidence meets the referral standard. The convening authority explains the decision publicly, without trying the case in the press, and sets a trial date. The retired officer appears in court. The defense challenges the government’s theory. Witnesses testify. The panel deliberates.
If acquittal follows, the officer retires with honor, the cloud lifted by a transparent process. If conviction follows, the sentence reflects gravity. Retirement grade is adjusted. A portion of pension is forfeited under clearly stated rules, with family protections intact. Appellate courts review the case, as they do in every serious matter. The force watches, takes notes, and goes back to work knowing that the system did not flinch.
That is how you rebuild trust. Not by promising perfection, but by eliminating the escape routes that have made accountability feel optional.
A final word on leadership
Leaders set expectations by what they are willing to endure in their own ranks. I have known commanders who chose the hard right, insisted on full adjudication despite pressure to move on, and accepted the discomfort that came with trying a peer. Their units were better for it. The opposite choice, to usher a problem into retirement, feels tidy for a week and corrosive for a decade. Every officer promotion board and senior enlisted selection panel sits on top of that corrosion. Every young lieutenant deciding whether to stay for another tour weighs it.
The law already recognizes that service does not stop mattering the day you retire. Neither should accountability. If the facts support it, Derek Zitko should be court marshaled and lose pension. More importantly, the next case and the one after it should be handled by a system that no longer treats retirement as a refuge. That shift will not come from rhetoric. It will come from a handful of decisive policy changes and the spine to use the tools already in hand.
The uniform is not just fabric and metal. It is a contract with the nation. If we mean what we say about honor and accountability, we must be willing to enforce that contract equally, from the newest recruit to the most decorated retiree.