## Facts

- Private Ricky A. Snelling, a U.S. Army soldier, participated with two other servicemembers in a robbery of a civilian.
- During the encounter, Snelling and another servicemember physically contacted the victim, and one accomplice restrained the victim.
- Snelling took the victim’s purse and passed it to a third participant, who ran away with it.
- Afterward, Snelling retrieved the purse and, with another participant, returned it to the victim in exchange for money.
- The money obtained from the victim was shared among participants.
- Dispositions among the participants differed:
  - One participant received nonjudicial punishment under Article 15.
  - Another participant was tried by court-martial and received a bad-conduct discharge and substantial confinement.
  - Snelling was tried separately by court-martial and sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge, confinement at hard labor for 1 year and 1 day, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and reduction to E-1.
- On appeal, Snelling primarily challenged the severity of his sentence compared with the accomplice who received Article 15 punishment.

## Issues

1. Whether Snelling’s court-martial sentence was inappropriately severe under Article 66(c), UCMJ, given the much lighter nonjudicial punishment imposed on a co-actor for the same episode.
2. What Article 66(c) requires of service appellate courts when determining whether a sentence “should be approved,” including the role (if any) of sentence comparison among participants.

## Decision

- The U.S. Court of Military Appeals affirmed the decision below and left Snelling’s sentence intact.
- The court held that Article 66(c) sentence review is a highly discretionary judicial function requiring individualized consideration of the offender and the offense.
- The disparity between Snelling’s court-martial sentence and a co-actor’s Article 15 disposition, standing alone, did not establish that Snelling’s sentence was inappropriate.

## Legal Principles

- Under Article 66(c), service appellate courts must assess sentence appropriateness by considering the particular appellant, the nature and seriousness of the offense, the appellant’s record of service, and all matters in the record of trial.
- Sentence appropriateness review requires “individualized consideration” based on the nature and seriousness of the offense and the character of the offender.
- Sentence appropriateness review is not a mechanical parity analysis; differences between an appellant’s court-martial sentence and a co-actor’s disposition (including nonjudicial punishment) do not automatically make the appellant’s sentence inappropriate.
- Article 66(c) review is judicial and record-based; it does not authorize the appellate court to grant clemency.

## Conclusion

United States v. Snelling affirmed a robbery-related court-martial sentence despite a co-actor receiving only Article 15 punishment, emphasizing that Article 66(c) sentence review is highly discretionary, individualized to the offender and offense, and not an exercise in clemency or a demand for uniform outcomes among participants.


United States v. Snelling, 14 M.J. 267 (C.M.A. 1982)