Initially, with press witnessing Funk's surrender, the Marine Corps responded with lenience. He was placed on restricted desk duty, and was told to report to the base every weekday between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. while the Corps began investigating his CO application. "It's amazing that I didn't get put in jail," Funk says.
Funk's lawyer, Stephen Collier, told the Associated Press last week that his client would likely receive only nonjudicial punishment--30 days of desk duty--for his failure to report as ordered.
But Funk will almost certainly face a charge this week under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (for "desertion with intent to avoid hazardous duty") for his failure to report as ordered, according to Major Carolyn Dysart, spokesperson for the U.S. Marine Forces Reserve. Should he be found guilty, he faces a maximum penalty of dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and up to five years in prison, Dysart says.
Reached by phone on the afternoon of Monday, April 7, Funk says he is about to be moved to a larger base, where he expects to face a court-martial. "I'm glad it's all now moving forward," a subdued Funk says.
Funk's drama began when the message came that his unit was being called up and he should prepare for war and make out a will. Twenty-year-old Funk decided to do something drastic: Secretly harboring deeply felt pacifist sentiments--ideas that he says crystallized last May amid the overt violence of the training he received at boot camp--he chose to go AWOL rather than join his unit on February 9.
He used his 47 days on the lam to hire a lawyer and complete an application he had already begun for conscientious objector status.
"I believe there is no way to justify any war," Funk says. He claims he joined the military during a period when he was depressed and cut off, in Northern California, from family and friends, leaving him vulnerable to the deceptively cheery sales pitch made by a military recruiter.
On April 1, accompanied by press and family, Funk, who graduated from in 2000 from the Capitol Hill alternative high school Nova, turned himself in to military authorities, application in hand, at a Marine base in San Jose, California.
Funk is also gay, and admits as much in his CO application. He stresses that he is not seeking to avoid military service because he is gay--his moral objection to war is the primary issue, he says--but felt compelled to reveal his orientation because the military requires applicants be completely honest about their moral reasoning. Nonetheless, he writes that his dehumanizing experiences of hatred and oppression as a gay man shaped his belief that the dehumanization implicit in warfare is morally unjustifiable.
The desertion charge will be handled separately from the conscientious objector application, Dysart explains. "He could be in confinement" while his conscientious objector status is sorted out, a process that should take a few months at most, she adds. Ordinarily, successful CO applications result in honorable discharges. Funk's lawyer did not return several calls requesting comment.
