desparate times
Reserve captain forced into duty
Norton man ordered to report despite suit
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | May 6, 2006
An Army Reserve captain from Norton who is suing top military leaders will be forced to report for training Monday at Fort Hood, Texas, by officials who plan to send him to Iraq.
But the legal battle over Jonathan E. O'Reilly's deployment will continue in a federal case in Boston that lawyers say tests the power of President Bush to force officers to remain on active duty beyond their commitment dates because of a recruitment shortage.
''It's truly a backdoor draft," said Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., a New York lawyer and military law specialist who represents O'Reilly. The outcome of O'Reilly's case and a similar case in Los Angeles, he said, could potentially have an impact on all military reserve officers.
A federal appeals court refused a request yesterday by O'Reilly, 32, a Norton School Committee member, to halt his deployment until his lawsuit is decided, ruling that any harm he might face is outweighed by the harm the military will face if it loses his services.
But the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said it will hold a hearing on O'Reilly's case in early June, so a decision on whether his lawsuit should be decided in Boston, or another court, can be made before he's sent to Iraq, which the Army says will happen sometime after June 17.
O'Reilly is slated to be the logistics officer on a team that will help train the Iraqi Army and ''holds a critical shortage job skill in the Army Reserves, so he is not easy to replace," US Army Colonel David W. Puster wrote in an affidavit filed with the court. O'Reilly is being deployed to Iraq for a year and a half.
But Rehkopf said his client has no special skills and is being forced into service more than two years after his obligation ended because the Army doesn't have enough captains.
''They do not have enough bodies. . . . That's the only reason they won't let him out," Rehkopf said.