Dereliction of duty is a specific offense under United States Code Title 10, Section 892, Article 92 and applies to all branches of the US military. A service member who is derelict has willfully refused to perform their duties (or follow a given order) or has incapacitated themselves in such a way that they cannot perform their duties. Such incapacitation includes the offender falling asleep while on duty requiring wakefulness, them getting drunk or otherwise intoxicated and consequently being unable to perform their duties, shooting themselves and thus being unable to perform any duty, or his vacating their post contrary to regulations.
Details
In the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), dereliction of duty is addressed within the regulations governing the failure to obey an order or regulation.
Punishment can include sanctions up to and including the death penalty (in times of war). Outside of wartime, the maximum punishment allowed is a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 1 year (10 years for service members receiving special pay under 37 USC 310).
Proving dereliction
In order to prosecute a service member under Article 92, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the service member knew (or should have reasonably known) their duties and that they were either, through neglect or culpable inefficiency (i.e., being inefficient without just cause), derelict in the performance of those duties.
A duty is imposed in any one of the following ways: that are, in themselves, examples of dereliction of duty:
Misuse of government property
An Airman First Class stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base was reduced to Airman when she received non-judicial punishment for dereliction of duty. She was found to have charged over $700 on her Travel Card for personal uses.