Walter Fitzpatrick Has Passed Away

by Sharon Rondeau

(Mar. 12, 2026) — The Post & Email learned last night that LCDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (USN, Retired) passed away early Wednesday morning. He was 74.

Born on January 27, 1952 into a military family, Fitzpatrick’s father, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, Jr., was a Navy physician and survived a “suicide amphibious assault into the French Moroccan city of Safi” during the 1942 endeavor, “Operation Torch.”

Beginning in 2009, Fitzpatrick exposed corruption in Tennessee’s judicial system affecting untold thousands of citizens over at least a century during which criminal court judges appointed grand-jury foremen “from wherever they choose” without the vetting process required by law, thereby denying citizens the impartial grand-jury review enshrined in the Fifth Amendment.

As a result of his probing of Tennessee’s shrouded judiciary, Fitzpatrick became a victim of false charges and spent 26 months in state prison as well as two stints in the Monroe County jail prompted by his 2010 attempt to make a citizen’s arrest of then-grand jury foreman Gary Pettway.

Through public-records requests, Fitzpatrick learned Pettway had held the position for 28 years and extended his complaints to local and county officials who allowed the practice of judicially-appointed, unvetted grand-jury foremen to continue unabated.

During his Naval service, Fitzpatrick was a victim of a conspiracy which forced him into an an unintended retirement after 20 years’ service, placed a false letter of reprimand in his record which remains undisturbed to this day, and denied him attendance at the Naval War College in Bethesda, MD to which he had been accepted.

Fitzpatrick is the author of “Acts of Supremacy: A Cautionary Indictment of America’s Military Justice System” edited by Dominic McFarland Martin detailing how his Naval career was jettisoned in 1994 from an act of retaliation on the part of Rear Admiral John W. Bitoff (Retired), from a court-martial five years earlier.

In 1999, Bitoff wrote in a letter to Rep. Norman Dicks that the process he himself set in motion against Fitzpatrick “should not have been consummated in trial by court-martial with the resultant career ending punishment.”

Bitoff passed away some years ago.

“Acts of Supremacy traces the ugly, and harrowing details of my Court-martial in the Spring of 1990, after I had annoyed an admiral who then orchestrated a full-on, ’50 to 1′ campaign against me,” the book’s introduction reads. “Further, it describes how our system of military justice initially came about, the various years of appeal that I pursued to attempt to secure an exoneration from these charges, the crime of forgery that took place during the course of the Court-martial itself (an act which today is still unprosecuted), and finally, what concrete steps of reform might be put in place so that a greater, transparent system of military justice might be achieved for all future sailors and soldiers, so that they do not have to endure what I did.”

The Post & Email wishes the Fitzpatrick family peace and strength during this difficult time.