A senior airman from Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, faces the death penalty if convicted of killing his fiancée and her unborn child, the court-martial convening authority has ruled.
Lt. Gen. Bruce Litchfield, convening authority and commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, referred charges against Senior Airman Charles Amos Wilson III to a general court-martial as a capital referral, according to a Robins release.
Wilson, a support team member with the 461st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, was arrested in August and charged with killing his fiancée, Tameda Ferguson, and her unborn child. Ferguson was found shot to death at her home in Dawson, Georgia, about 100 miles south of Robins. She was 8½ months pregnant.
Investigating officer Col. William Muldoon recommended the death penalty in an Article 32 report completed May 29, Wilson's senior defense counsel Maj. Will Babor told Air Force Times in June.
Litchfield's capital referral, signed Oct. 9, means the jury will consider a death sentence if Wilson is convicted of premeditated murder.
The death penalty is rare in the military — most death sentences are overturned on appeal, and the last military execution occurred more than 50 years ago. The Air Force last carried out the death penalty in 1954, when two airmen were executed for the rape and murder of a Guam citizen.
The Air Force also has taken charge of two other cases that previously were being handled by civilian authorities.
Wilson faces arson and murder charges in connection with an October 2011 fire in his rental home that killed Demetrius Hardy, a civilian employee at Robins. Authorities believe Wilson and Hardy conspired to set fire to Wilson's trailer to collect insurance money.
In July 2012, Wilson was arrested for allegedly driving his pickup truck toward a female Air Force technical sergeant in a threatening manner, dragging her by her hair and firing a gun at her from the window of his home. The technical sergeant told police that Wilson said to her, "I'm going to make you die today."
Wilson is scheduled for arraignment Oct. 22 at the Naval Consolidated Brig, Charleston, South Carolina, the release said. While a trial date has not been set, Col. Vance Spath, chief trial judge of the Air Force, has been assigned as the presiding military judge.
