What probably happened to Leyton?

[arch101]

For an attempted military coup, Leyton got FIVE YEARS? What the actual FUCK?

Should have been at least twenty.

Tom Paris and Bashir's dad didn't exactly do hard time for supposedly serious crimes. I guess, in a society of such complete freedom and harmony, that even a short amount of time with your rights completely revoked is considered tough punishment.

 

[Jayson1]

Leyton, Captain Maxwell, Admiral Kennelly and Admiral Pressman all served time together in the same prison and started a prison gang called the Arrows. You didn't want mess with the Arrows. They made hand carved shanks that looked like comm badges. They threatened people into giving up their conjugal visits inside the prison holodeck with their favorite sex program so They could have more sexy time on the holodeck. They had family members sneak in a comm badge hidden up in their butt so as not to get caught. Which they then used to contact and bribe transporters operators to beam in booze and other fun stuff secretly.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Tom Paris and Bashir's dad didn't exactly do hard time for supposedly serious crimes.

They didn't even come close to Leyton's high treason.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Sent to live on a farm upstate with all the other Badmirals.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I think its important to remember that in the future, prison isn't for punishment, it's for rehabilitation.

The Federation is cuddly like that.

 

[Timo]

We don't know the length of Tom's sentence, or even whether it was a sentence (as opposed to incarceration for therapy purposes, to be terminated when the patient is cured). But Garak got six months for attempted genocide, in the literal sense of the word rather than the modern twenty-counts-for-entire-genus one. If that was a sentence, then any legal system where the punishment fits the crime ought to treat attempted coup with relative lenience. Three months? Two?

In comparison, Dick Bashir did explicit prison time, at least by his own words, and he knew the length of that time beforehand so the odds of it being a sentence are higher than those of it being to facilitate getting better. This is a big aberration from all other incarceration in modern Trek (overnighters or symbolic cool-off periods in the brig, another half-year stint for smuggling, etc), and more in line with the pre-TOS jail sentence of Mike Burnham. But perhaps Bashir's ancient crime deserved an ancient punishment? Or then it was well known that no therapy would help with that particular type of crime, so the criminals got the maximum allowed 24 months and then were let to walk, and not to Elba II, either.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Charles Phipps]

Frankly, Burnham's sentence is entirely based on scapegoating her for the war when Starfleet was in desperate denial that the Klingons would have started one no matter what.

 

[Timo]

...Not that I'd find it implausible that the books would indeed say "for starting war without permission, minimum sentence: life", no matter how unjustly the charges were slapped on Burnham.

Somebody would be frantically rewriting said books between DSC and TOS, though, to keep up with the advances in treating this newly discovered disease criminalitis.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Wormhole]

We don't know the length of Tom's sentence,

I don't get the impression it was supposed to be very long. The deal for helping Voyager track down Chakotay's Maquis ship was that Janeway would put a good word in for Tom at his next parole hearing. In the Non Sequitor timeline, that doesn't happen because Tom gets arrested on DS9 for assault and sent back to New Zealand, yet he still got released in a matter of months anyway, in spite of getting in trouble while he was on a work release and presumably no good word from Janeway at the parole hearing, since she was in the Delta Quadrant by then and even if she weren't probably wouldn't be inclined to do so anyway.

 

[Damian]

I imagine Leyton was sent to a Federation Penal Colony and forever cashiered out of Starfleet.

In the novels that's basically what happened. He popped up from time to time in the post-series relaunch novels. At one point I recall they had to ask him questions about something (I forget the details) and he was a bit evasive. The last novel to mention him was TNG novel, Available Light, where he was released from prison and faded into obscurity, refusing interview requests from the media.

Those are novels, and not canon, obviously. But it sounds logical. He would serve time in a penal colony, then after he was 'rehabilitated' he would be released. Then fading into obscurity.

He was not a 'traitor' in the traditional sense. He didn't want power for power's sake, but for his own delusions of security. So after serving time I can see him fading to the background. In the novels he never felt what he did was 'wrong,' but it's one of those things where if they didn't want his 'help' than he wasn't going to 'help.' Forget you then, basically.

 

[Jayson1]

Frankly, Burnham's sentence is entirely based on scapegoating her for the war when Starfleet was in desperate denial that the Klingons would have started one no matter what.

She assaulted her Captain and basically committed mutiny. Also Even if Klingons are going to start a war that doesn't mean you make the first move.

 

[The Wormhole]

She assaulted her Captain and basically committed mutiny.

But in the end, that's all she really did, assault her Captain. Assault, even assault of a superior officer does not get you life in prison.

 

[Charles Phipps]

She assaulted her Captain and basically committed mutiny. Also Even if Klingons are going to start a war that doesn't mean you make the first move.

Bah, Samuel T. Cogley could have gotten her off for untreated PTSD acting up around Klingons.

Which it was.

 

[Jayson1]

I agree life in prison was absurd. Not sure I buy that Starfleet was throwing her under the bridge though for politics. I think it was just overly melodramatic stakes they went with for her court scene.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Mike probably personally set her own sentence. Because...Burnham.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I agree life in prison was absurd. Not sure I buy that Starfleet was throwing her under the bridge though for politics. I think it was just overly melodramatic stakes they went with for her court scene.

The War with the Klingons challenged a lot of assumptions about the Federation up until that point, particularly after the Xindi War was resolved peacefully but the Romulan War was in recent memory. Its an unprovoked attack that the Federation believed must have been set off by a rogue officer with a history against Klingons. Its easy to put it in the "box" of that and hope things could be settled peacefully.

When, of course, we know that a deranged Klingon fundamentalist and cult leader is the real architect and that Burnham was 100% correct that it was the Federation's peacefulness that invoked the attack than the reverse.

I can see them throwing the book at her, believing it would mollify them when, of course, it was never about her.

 

[Jayson1]

I'm not sure they would throw the book at her just to appease the Klingons but I could see mutiny and then using mutiny to start a war factoring in the picture. It's one thing to mutiny for a good cause like the crew that did that to Pressman and Riker when he was just out of Starfleet but if your first act after mutiny is to shoot at the Klingons then is another issue. That puts you more in the category of Ben Maxwell who didn't mutiny but was waging war for reasons that turned out to be correct.

 

[dupersuper]

Leyton was revealed to be one of the few Starfleet Admirals with no connection to Section 31 at all.

That seems absurd for a supposedly secret organization. How many admirals does Starfleet have? Hundreds? Thousands?

the Romulan War was in recent memory.

Recent for a Vulcan maybe...

 

[Charles Phipps]

That seems absurd for a supposedly secret organization. How many admirals does Starfleet have? Hundreds? Thousands?

I think of the ones we've met. But every Starfleet admiral we meet is usually up to something nefarious.

 

[Timo]

We could do statistics on that, but my gut instinct is that we saw Badmirals about as often as we saw Kirk punching a woman. It happens, and it's done for shock and awe, but the usual role of the Admiral is to send the hero to the adventure or then to try and send him or her to another, more pressing adventure. Sheer obstructionism occasionally happens but is in the eye of the beholder. Nefarious plans? Marcus, Cartwright (who really is interchangeable with Marcus, give or take a timeline), Pressman, Leyton, and then a couple of folks possessed by aliens or duped by bad guys. None of the Section 31 bosses seemed to be up to anything particularly malicious, say.

Timo Saloniemi