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Issue Date: February 16, 2004
Airforce Times

Air Force nurse gets 8 months for cocaine use
Officer initially blamed sex for positive drug test

By Nicole Gaudiano
Times staff writer

Like a sexually transmitted disease, cocaine had worked into Air Force Capt. Jacqueline Chester’s system during intercourse with her ex-husband, unbeknown to her. That was to be her defense on a drug charge — until Feb. 3.
Then the pediatric nurse pleaded guilty to wrongful use of a controlled substance during her court-martial at Dover Air Force Base, Del. A second, positive urinalysis test showed the “ex-husband defense” wasn’t the full story.

“I knowingly ingested an illegal substance which I was aware of,” she told Air Force Col. Thomas Cumbie, the military judge, during an hour-and-a-half hearing.

Cumbie sentenced Chester to eight months’ confinement, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and dismissal from the service, the officer’s equivalent of a dishonorable discharge. She will serve six months of that sentence because the convening authority, 18th Air Force Commander, capped her jail time at 180 days as part of a pretrial agreement.

Chester’s face contorted as Cumbie delivered the sentence, but she remained calm throughout the hearing. She spent the last minutes before the hearing signing a stack of pink greeting cards with hearts and flowers as her attorneys flipped through her court documents.

Chester, 46, of the 436th Medical Operations Squadron, first registered a low positive on a random drug test in January 2003 — just 260 nanograms per milliliter. The Defense Department’s cutoff for a positive test is 100 nanograms per milliliter.

Investigators began pursuing a drug charge, collecting a hair sample in March 2003 that detected cocaine at a concentration of 1,580 nanograms per gram. Those results were consistent with a person ingesting cocaine at least one to three times per month over a six- to nine-month period, according to the government and defense stipulation of fact.

Still, her husband was prepared to testify that, unknown to her, he had “used cocaine on the tip of his penis to prolong his sexual pleasure” more than once, her attorney, Charles Gittins, said in January. Gittins said he had expert witnesses who would corroborate the defense as plausible.

“I thought it was a great defense,” Gittins said Feb. 3.

But after being arraigned on the charge, Chester failed another urinalysis test. This time, she registered 2,841 nanograms per milliliter, more than 28 times the threshold.

When he learned of the new results later in January, Gittins said he thought, “She’s done. It can’t be an accident.”

During the hearing, Chester admitted she had snorted cocaine “anywhere from two to four to five times” between July 2002 and January 2004. “Most of the time, it was in my home or vehicle, sir,” she told the judge.

Gittins argued for a 60-day sentence, saying that Chester’s off-duty offense affected no one other than herself. He asked the judge to take into account her life stresses — a suicidal son and a daughter with ovarian cancer — along with the fact that she sought treatment.

But Cumbie’s ruling leaned more toward the prosecutor’s request for a nine-month sentence. Air Force Capt. Shane Flannery asked Cumbie to send a message with his ruling.

“Just as we can’t have drug users taking care of billion-dollar airplanes, we can’t have them taking care of our members,” he said.

While Chester’s husband and a few women attended the hearing to support her, two nurses were there in support of the nursing program. Lt. Col. Ann Parker, chief nurse at the clinic and acting Medical Operations Squadron commander, took issue with Gittins’ statement that Chester’s offense affected no one other than herself.

“He hasn’t been in the clinic the last year,” she said. While Chester spent a year earning captain’s pay — $4,568.70 per month — other nurses had to pick up her duties with patients, she said.

Immediately after Chester tested positive, nurses reviewed her patients’ medical records for any errors, which they did not find. But as a standard, they conduct monthly peer reviews, annual training and other compentency reviews.

Parker’s biggest concern is the perception that Chester’s offense is the norm. “This is not the norm,” she said.



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