Maj. Joshua Goetting was sentenced to 200 days of confinement Monday in a special court-martial at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy. He pleaded guilty to two specifications of domestic violence. (Kent Harris/Stars and Stripes)
VICENZA, Italy — The chief of administrative law for the Southern European Task Force pleaded guilty this week to domestic abuse and was sentenced to just shy of seven months of confinement for threatening and assaulting his wife.
Maj. Joshua Goetting took a plea agreement Monday during a special court-martial at Caserma Ederle and received a sentence of 200 days from military judge Col. Andrew Kazin.
In return, prosecutors agreed to drop 27 of the original 29 specifications of domestic abuse and several other lesser charges, as well as downgrade his trial from a general court-martial, allowing him the possibility of a lesser sentence.
Special courts-martial make up the second level of the military’s three-tier trial system. They normally try cases of intermediate severity, whereas general courts-martial are used in cases involving the most severe violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Kazin’s sentence of Goetting roughly split the difference between the maximum 290 days the prosecution could recommend under the plea agreement and the 121 days the defense had proposed.
“For the past 15 years, Major Goetting has put on his camouflage uniform every day,” prosecutor Maj. Sara Nicholson said during her closing statement. “But he was hiding something extra: his true personality.”
Nicholson, Kazin and all but one of the soldiers conducting the trial were brought in from either Kaiserslautern, Germany, or the United States to avoid the appearance of partiality.
Several members of the current Judge Advocate General’s office testified on Goetting’s behalf during the sentencing phase.
They and other current and former JAG officers or people who had worked closely with him painted a picture of a highly competent and even-tempered officer who excelled at every stop during his 15-year career.
Prosecutors, however, said Goetting was a different person around his wife. They tried to demonstrate that by playing two audio recordings made by Goetting’s wife, Renee, on her cellphone.
She had started to record the couple’s arguments because she feared for her life, she testified Monday.
In the first, the couple is heard arguing in the car on Oct. 5, 2024, on the way home from a spa. The argument started when Renee Goetting left a necklace in her husband’s gym bag.
Joshua Goetting threatened to “knock (her) teeth out” and later muttered, “I ought to throw her down the f------ stairs.”
The second recording, made on Feb. 23, 2025, on an upper floor of the couple’s home while their two young children were playing downstairs, contains more arguing and what prosecutors said was the sound of Goetting slapping his wife across the face.
Renee Goetting, who moved back to her home state of Kansas, said she didn’t want to report her husband’s actions to the authorities, especially when he told her that due to his position on base “no one would believe her.”
She said she eventually decided the only way for her to be able to leave him with her children would be to report his actions. She did so on March 12.
Joshua Goetting initially denied the accusations while meeting with criminal investigators, leading to one of the charges that were dropped.
Renee Goetting confirmed after the trial ended Monday night that she had multiple recordings from other arguments and incidents that presumably led to the other specifications of abuse.
She testified that while attending a church service after being slapped by her husband, she had difficulty maintaining her composure.
“I thought I was going to die that day,” she said.
Attorneys for Goetting acknowledged that he had made mistakes but argued that he should be allowed to return to society.
