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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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August 4th,
2007 - 2 Juries, 2 Sentences for Iraqi Man’s Death News article by the San Diego
Union-Tribune |
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2 Juries, 2 Sentences
for Iraqi Man’s Death Marine gets 15 years; comrade demoted but not imprisoned By Steve Liewer and Rick Rogers San Diego Union-Tribune August 4, 2007 Concluding a case that
sparked soul-searching throughout the Marine Corps, two military juries
handed down vastly different sentences for essentially the same crimes
yesterday. Their pronouncements suggest
a sharp division over what is criminal and what, for lack of a better phrase,
is the reality of sending young troops to fight where the enemy seemingly
lurks everywhere. Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins
III and Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda stood in neighboring courtrooms at Camp
Pendleton to receive their sentences from panels of their combat-hardened
peers. Hutchins, who oversaw the
kidnapping and killing of an Iraqi man in Hamdaniya last year, received 15
years in prison, a demotion and a dishonorable discharge. Magincalda, who
helped snatch and tie up the victim, also was demoted but will not spend
another day in the brig. “In this chaotic climate in
Iraq, clean, clear judgments are hard to come by,” said Eugene R. Fidell, a
former Coast Guard judge advocate and president of the National Institute of
Military Justice in Washington. Near noon yesterday,
Hutchins sighed deeply before standing to hear his sentence. As the gravity
of the jury foreman's words sank in, he slumped to his chair and rested his
head on the defense table. When he lifted his head, his eyes appeared red and
moist. His mother, sitting behind
him in the court gallery, wept into her husband's shoulder. His wife, Reyna,
lowered her face and sobbed. His 2-year-old daughter remained oblivious,
continuing to talk and sing. A few minutes later,
Hutchins kissed his wife on cheek to console her. “This whole situation is
tragic. It's very sad,” said the prosecutor, Capt. Nick Gannon, who had asked
the jury to return a 30-year sentence. Defense attorney Rich
Brannon realized the sentence could have been worse, but that thought gave
him little solace. “I've tried to tell myself
that it's OK, but it's not all right,” Brannon said. “The (Hutchins) family
is really, really hurt.” Brannon said he will ask Lt.
Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp
Pendleton, to reduce his client's sentence. Barring an unlikely turn of
events, Hutchins will complete his prison term in the military penitentiary
at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The gloom in the Hutchins
courtroom contrasted starkly with the joy in Magincalda's a few hours
earlier. The jury in that trial limited Magincalda's prison term to 448 days
– the amount of time he already had served while undergoing court
proceedings. The prosecution had sought a
10-year sentence, while the defense asked for no additional jail time and no
punitive discharge. A dishonorable or
bad-conduct discharge would have prevented Magincalda from receiving future
benefits – including medical care – through the military or Department of
Veterans Affairs. After the jury delivered its
sentence, the lead defense attorney, Joseph Low, smiled and patted his client
on the back. Magincalda hugged his
parents and stepsisters. “I'm very happy, and I'm
proud I'll still be able to serve as a Marine,” Magincalda said during a news
conference after the sentencing. But with a demotion and
felony conviction on his record, it is unclear whether he will be allowed to
stay in the Marine Corps. “I did my time,” Magincalda
said. “If the military will still have me, I'll stay in.” He also said the jurors'
Iraq war duty probably helped them pass appropriate judgment. “I think they had some
really true insight about what we're talking about, what we've been through,”
Magincalda said. “I was very happy that I got a fair trial.” The Hutchins and Magincalda
sentences capped a saga that began on the evening of April 25, 2006, in a
palm grove outside the insurgent-filled town of Hamdaniya. There, seven Marines and a
Navy corpsman from Camp Pendleton's Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine
Regiment bought into Hutchins' plot to kill a suspected insurgent named Saleh
Gowad. They had become exasperated after repeatedly arresting Gowad and
turning him over to Iraqi authorities, only to see him released each time. Around midnight, several
Marines from the squad went to grab their target. They decided to snatch a
neighbor after failing to find Gowad. The Marines marched their
victim, a grandfather whose identity remains in dispute, to a roadside hole.
They gagged him, bound his hands and feet, and then riddled his body with
bullets. The unit tried to cover up
its vigilante-style execution. It placed a shovel, an AK-47 rifle and shell
casings around the corpse to create the appearance of a firefight between
U.S. personnel and an insurgent who was trying to plant a bomb. Military investigators soon
unraveled the crime, which has shocked a range of human-rights advocates,
legal experts and political leaders in the United States and Iraq. The Hamdaniya killing also
sparked concern from senior military officials. It and another war-crimes
case involving Camp Pendleton troops prompted top military brass to visit
bases nationwide and in Iraq. The commanders lectured service members about
combat rules and battlefield ethics. But the Hamdaniya case also
generated a groundswell of support for the defendants. Many active-duty Marines and
military veterans rallied around them. Some of the backers held protests
outside Camp Pendleton's front gate. Others raised hundreds of thousands of
dollars to help the defendants pay their legal bills. Relatively early in the
judicial process, the squad's five most junior members signed plea agreements
with the government. They pleaded guilty to offenses less than murder,
receiving prison sentences of one to eight years in exchange for their
testimony against the remaining defendants. In the past month, the
court-martial juries for Hutchins, Magincalda and Cpl. Trent D. Thomas
delivered highly varying verdicts. They convicted all three
Marines of conspiracy but found only Hutchins guilty of murder. “At least there was a
conviction, and at least the ringleader was brought to justice (for the
killing),” said Auday Arabo, an Iraqi-American lawyer from San Diego who said
he followed the case closely. “Personally, I'm not going to second-guess a
jury of military men who have served in Iraq.” Arabo noted that in many
other countries, it would be unthinkable to charge a service member for
killing someone during wartime. “We have to walk on the
moral high ground,” he said. “We are the beacon of light, and we can't let
our standards down.” Some observers said the
larger question is what impact these mixed verdicts will have on troops who
must make life-and-death decisions in Iraq. “They have to be very
vigilant in complying with the rules of engagement,” said John Huston, dean
of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire and former staff judge
advocate of the Navy and Marine Corps. “I hope they conclude that they should
not conspire to murder anyone.” External link: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20070804-9999-7n4hamda.html Marine gets 15 years for
Hamdania killing Attorney says Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins will ask general for relief By Teri Figueroa North County Times August 4, 2007 6:17 AM PDT Camp Pendleton - The first
Marine convicted of murdering an Iraqi in the war zone since the U.S.
invasion sunk into his chair and put his head on the table Friday afternoon
after he learned his fate: 15 years in prison. The punishment was a punch
in the gut to Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins, as well as an about face from decisions
made by other juries, who convicted his accused squad mates on lesser charges
and set them free. Hutchins was the leader of
the squad whose members admitted they kidnapped and killed an Iraqi man. He
was also the highest-ranking Marine among the accused, and according to
testimony, he was the chief architect of a killing plot crafted in a palm
grove during an overnight patrol. "I felt all along that
fingers would be pointed at my client," Hutchins' attorney Rich Brannon
said after the verdict. "He was what you would call the lead defendant.
I felt like the other defendants had a better chance." Hutchins' jury, made up of
combat veterans, also sentenced the squad leader to a reduction in rank to
private, a dishonorable discharge and a reprimand for his role as the
mastermind in a plot that left an Iraqi man shot to death in Hamdania on
April 26, 2006. Brannon said he would ask Lt.
Gen. James Mattis to review the sentence. As head of all Marine Corps forces
in the Middle East, Mattis is the convening authority over the Hamdania
cases. Although there will be
automatic appeals and a plea for relief, the jury's decision drops the curtain
on much of the saga for eight Camp Pendleton squad members who became known
as the Pendleton Eight last summer. All were charged with murder in June 2006
for their roles in the killing. The sentence came as the
military base is dealing with criminal charges brought in another case, in
which another squad of men is accused of wrongfully killing 24 civilians in
the Iraqi city of Haditha. In the Hamdania case,
Hutchins' No. 2 and No. 3 men were acquitted of murder, but found guilty of
conspiracy and sentenced to time served. That amounted to less than 15 months
each. ‘The disparity is a lot’ As the jury foreman
announced the punishment, the sergeant's wife, Reyna Hutchins, put her head
to her knees. She sobbed inconsolably as she sat in the audience behind her
husband throughout the rest of the short hearing, while the couple's nearly
3-year-old daughter quietly sang to herself. Hutchins' mother slumped over
onto the shoulder of Hutchins' father. As the family left the
courtroom, Hutchins put his arm around his wife, kissed her hard on the side
of the face and whispered in her ear. "The family is really,
really hurt," Brannon said. "They feel like the disparity (with the
sentences for his squad mates) is a lot." A few hours before Hutchins
learned his fate, his squad mate Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, who was acquitted
of murder but convicted of conspiracy in the plot, listened as a jury told
him he would be walking free. Two weeks ago, release from
the brig was also part of the same sentence handed down to now Pvt. Trent
Thomas - he was also busted down from corporal and will be given a
bad-conduct discharge. The remainder of the squad,
all of whom were charged with murder, pleaded guilty to reduced charges and
testified against their accused squad mates from Kilo Company in the 3rd
Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. Their testimony was the meat
of the government's cases. According to them, Hutchins'
plan targeted a highly suspected insurgent said to be behind roadside
bombings and other attacks on troops in the rural area of Hamdania, outside
of Baghdad. When they couldn't reach
him, they snatched and killed his neighbor, then reported they had killed him
in a firefight. The squad members who
testified said the point of the killing was to send a message to insurgents
that roadside bombs and attacks on troops would not be tolerated in the area. And in asking the jury to
sentence Hutchins to 30-years in prison, prosecutor Capt. Nicholas Gannon
asked the panel of Iraq war veterans to "send a message" to other
Marines to "communicate what lawless vigilantism will bring." "You have to
communicate with a sentence that is severe enough that the moment of truth,
right before something really bad happens, somebody has the fortitude to
stand up and say no," Gannon said. "The ramifications of what you
do here today, it will become very clear that, while difficult, while
challenging, it is necessary." It took the jury of five
officers and four enlisted men about three hours to settle on Hutchins'
sentence. Convicting of him of murder took two days. ‘A tragic mistake’ The testimony from the
junior Marines and a corpsman at the courts-martial for Hutchins, Magincalda
and Thomas shined light on the frustrations the squad faced in combat,
particularly with seeing a man regarded as the lead insurgent in the Hamdania
area repeatedly released from custody. Defense attorneys in both
Hutchins' and Magincalda's cases did not deny that their clients played a
role in the plot. But they argued that violence toward Iraqi detainees was
encouraged by the men's superiors. Jurors heard testimony from
Marines that superiors in their company beat Iraqi suspects during
questioning and shoved guns in their faces or mouths. And Lt. Nathan Phan,
who was in charge of the platoon, testified that he had directed Hutchins to
choke another Iraqi detainee until he was unconscious. The Marine Corps
reprimanded Phan earlier this year. Phan also testified that he
and the squad had talked about killing local insurgents, and that his
attitude may have shaped the kidnapping and slaying plot. But he did not
order Marines to do what they did on the night in question, he said. During Thomas' trial, one of
the convicted squad members, Pvt. Robert Pennington, told the jury that
"in the end, the actions we took prevented bodily harm or death to
Marines." And at Hutchins trial,
Pennington told the jury that he and his squad mates were "sick of"
the rules of engagement and "decided to write our own rules to keep
ourselves alive." During his sentencing
hearing, Hutchins spoke about his squad's "frustration" with their
inability to keep the area's lead insurgent in custody. The sergeant did not
offer apologies for the slaying. Attorney Brannon said the
lack of remorse likely had "a significant impact" on the jury, but
that "Sgt. Hutchins feels like he did what he was told." "We had a tragic
mistake, although I think it was command-influenced," Brannon said,
"and I think it is very difficult emotionally for Larry to deal with
that mistake." ‘Vagaries of the jury system’ Four of the five men who
pleaded guilty to lesser charges made deals that gave them less than two
years of jail time. Two of those men have already served their time and been
released from the brig. Pennington was the fifth man
to plead guilty. He agreed to an eight-year prison sentence in exchange for
his testimony. Hutchins' 15-year sentence
was a surprise to Gary Solis, a retired Marine legal officer who teaches
military law at Georgetown University, given the decisions by other juries to
let Hutchins squad mates go free. "This illustrates the
vagaries of the jury system," Solis said in a phone call to his
Washington D.C. office. "There's no predicting what a jury will do. Some
will think that this jury is overly harsh, others will think that it is
appropriate in its sentence." He also noted that some felt
the decisions by other juries were appropriate, while others found it too
lenient. The decision to prosecute
the men for actions in a war zone, he said, tells him that the Marine Corps
"takes the offenses seriously." "It sends its own
message that the Marine Corps won't tolerate it," Solis said. According to Solis'
research, of the 27 Marines who were convicted of unlawfully killing
Vietnamese civilians, 15 were handed life sentences. An additional three
Marines got sentences of more than 20 years, and two others were sentenced to
10 years. The longest sentence served
by any of those Marines convicted for killing Vietnamese civilians was 12
years and one month, Solis found. External link: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/04/news/top_stories/1_01_258_1_07.txt |