Brigadier General Warren Wells, the lead prosecutor for the Army Office of Special Trial Counsel, was fired last week by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth. The reason was an email he sent ten years ago.

I have personally known Wells since 2019 and worked for him briefly as a special victims prosecutor in the Army. Wells is known throughout the Army JAG Corps for his even-handed, fair, and impartial nature.

To Wormuth, that is a massive a problem.

The email

What was this email? What was so scandalous that it required firing a well-respected flag officer with an impeccable service record across over twenty-five years of experience?

In short: Wells was fired for telling the truth.

As a Lieutenant Colonel, Wells served as Regional Defense Counsel for the Army Trial Defense Services, which is the equivalent of the public defender’s office for the Army. His job was to supervise criminal defense counsel across five installations.

In that role, Wells sent an email to his region stating that “you and your teams are now the ONLY line of defense against false allegations and sobriety regret.” He reiterated that soldiers accused of sexual assault would be prosecuted “even when all signs indicate innocence.” Why would this happen? Because “Congress and our political masters are dancing by the fire of misleading statistics and one-sided, repetitive misinformation by those with an agenda.”

This statement from ten years ago remains objectively true. But it strikes at the heart of the zeitgeist in the military’s humanist justice system.

The cruelty of empathy

Over the last two decades, Congress has rapidly transformed the military justice system and eroded basic due process protections for service members. This is particularly true of domestic and sexual-based crimes.

Congress redesigned the Uniform Code of Military Justice into an affirmative consent regime, undermining the historic common law crime of rape with humanist consent-based crimes like “sexual assault.” This placed the military justice system on par with the most liberal criminal justice systems in America.

The problem with consent-based crimes, and the MeToo movement generally, is that they exchange fundamental Christian principles for humanist ethics. Whereas Christian virtue requires compassion for victims of violent crimes, humanist ethics require empathy. However, even the most tender mercies of the wicked are cruel (Proverbs 12:10).

As theologian Joe Rigney has so succinctly pointed out: “Compassion only suffers with another person; empathy suffers in them. It’s a total immersion into the pain, sorrow, and suffering of the afflicted.” Additionally, pastor Toby Sumpter recently pointed out: “The kindness of autonomous man,” which is man divorced from the word and law of God, “is cruel.” Replacing God’s compassion with humanist empathy, in the words of Sumpter, replaces God’s kindness with a “veneer of niceness on the outside, but piles of compromise and cruelty on the inside.”

Criminal justice and the problem with empathy

A criminal justice system built around compassion for justice requires that fundamental biblical truths be applied to every allegation and every participant. This is known simply as due process.

For example, the Bible teaches that man is fallen and totally corrupted (Genesis 3:6-8; Romans 3:10-12). The law of God requires impartial application (Leviticus 19:15). The testimony of one witness alone is not sufficient to convict and punish another person (Deuteronomy 17:6). Accordingly the law of God not only forbids perjury (Exodus 20:16) but also requires witnesses to testify (Leviticus 5:1). If a judge determines a witness to be a false accuser then the judge “shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother” in order to purge the evil from society (Deuteronomy 19:18-19). Over and over again, God’s compassion for justice is evident in the biblical requirement for due process (Proverbs 18:17) and the importance of retributive punishment upon conviction (Deuteronomy 22:25-26).

However, a criminal justice system built around empathy inverts God’s design for justice. For example, empathy requires partiality toward alleged victims. If a woman claims unassailable victim status, then empathy requires she must be treated as intrinsically “good” and believed without question. If an alleged victim testifies at trial, then her testimony is sufficient to convict without any additional evidence or testimony if the factfinder finds her credible. Empathy elevates the internal subjective feelings of the woman over objective facts and calls this “consent.” Empathy also requires false accusers to be protected from punishment so that punishment for false witness does not discourage other alleged victims.

Meanwhile, this same empathy undermines the biblical protections for actual victims of rape, which prior to a Supreme Court opinion in 1977 included the rapist being put to death.

Warren Wells and the altar of empathy

The email from Wells over ten years ago is objectively and biblically true. Women do sin. Women also lie. Moreover, some women do make false accusations about rape and sexual assault. Defense lawyers are the last bulwark of protection for falsely accused service members in the military. Service members are prosecuted in the military “even when all signs indicate innocence.” Congress continues to erode due process protections for service members because of their own political agenda, at great cost to those who sacrifice for the nation in military service.

In an age of secular humanism that continues to rewrite laws in man’s own image, truth is irrelevant and justice is subverted. To question the veracity of a self-appointed victim is anathema and blasphemy. To be even-handed, fair, and impartial is considered cruelty toward alleged victims. Such is the thinking of people who trade truth for lies (Romans 1:25). It is a tragedy that an ideologue who holds to this worldview sits in the highest office of the Army.

Brigadier General Warren Wells is a leader of character and integrity well known for his impartiality. He was fired not because what he said was untrue, but because he demonstrated compassion toward justice rather than empathy toward alleged victims.