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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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June 9th,
2008 - Decision Coming June 16, Next Big Day in Haditha Case |
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Decision Coming June 16, Next
Big Day in Haditha Case By Nathaniel R. Helms Defend Our Marines June 9, 2008 Attorneys representing
Marine Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani will find out June 16 whether the presiding
judge in the “Haditha Massacre” case will grant a defense motion to dismiss
his charges because of undue command influence. If Folsom denies the defense
motion Chessani will stand general court-martial July 21 for alleged
dereliction of duty and orders violations, said Richard Thompson, chief
counsel of the civilian law firm representing him. The veteran combat Marine is
the highest ranking officer to be charged with a crime in the discredited
massacre investigation. Four enlisted men and three officers under his
command were also charged with war crimes. Five of them have already been
exonerated during pre-trail legal maneuvers and 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson was
found not guilty last week of a laundry list of related charges. The day before Grayson went
to trial, military judge Lt. Col. Steven Folsom deferred making a decision on
a defense motion by Chessani’s lawyers asking that the case be dismissed
“with prejudice” for alleged undue command influence in the convening
authority’s decision to prosecute the former commander of 3rd battalion, 1st
Marines in Iraq. Even with a favorable
decision by Folsom, Chessani is not out of the woods, Thompson said. Folsom
could dismiss the charges “without prejudice,” leaving the door open for
Chessani to be charged again. One member of Chessani’s
defense team noted that government prosecutors have already shown they will
go to any length to obtain a conviction in the broadest, most expensive
criminal investigation in contemporary military history. “Why wouldn’t they?” he
said. “We are talking about prosecutors still trying to maintain the fiction
there was no incoming fire after the IED went off and that the huge firefight
on Viper was a separate incident.” Four enlisted members of a
rifle squad Chessani command killed 15 civilians and eight insurgents hiding
among them after a remotely detonated IED killed a squad member and wounded
two others riding in a convoy. About 500 meters away on a road called Viper
another squad of Marines was embroiled in a morning-long grenade fight with
insurgents that left nine Marines wounded. The ambushed infantrymen
were later accused by Time magazine and Congressman John Murtha with going
berserk; hunting down innocent civilians and shooting them in cold
blood. The subsequent investigation
showed that none of the circumstances cited by Time and Murtha proved to be
true. Last week 1st Lt. Andrew
Grayson, the first of three defendants to face general court-martial in the
Haditha incident, was found not guilty of obstruction of justice, making
false statements, and attempting to obtain a fraudulent discharge by a
seven-member jury panel of fellow Marine officers. His exoneration followed a
30-month, multi-million dollar, world-wide investigation and five-day
court-martial at Camp Pendleton that took the panel five hours to dispose of. Grayson was attached to
Chessani’s command in Iraq as an intelligence officer. He is the sixth of
eight original defendants cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident. The
panel‘s rapid verdict put the already weak prosecution case in total
disarray, several attorneys involved in the case said. Chessani is awaiting general
court-martial for dereliction of duty and orders violations for allegedly
failing to investigate and report the incident. He faces dismissal from the
service, loss of all retirement benefits, and three years in prison if
convicted. The criminal charges against
Chessani stem from a house-to-house, room-by-room battle that four of his
enlisted Marines engaged in on November 19, 2005, after being ambushed by
insurgents in Haditha. In the day long battle that followed one Marine was
killed and 11 others from Kilo Company, 3/1 were wounded. Folsom’s ruling follows
testimony last Monday by Gen. James N. Mattis and the conspicuous absence of
Lt. Gen Samuel Helland in the matter. The prosecution called Mattis to refute
defense claims he was unduly influenced by Col John Ewers, the Marine lawyer who
investigated Chessani’s command in Iraq for an Army general and later became
Mattis’ personal legal counselor as Staff Judge Advocate of the 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force. Before being appointed the
1st MEF SJA Ewers was assigned to investigate the alleged massacre at
Haditha, Iraq in the winter of 2006 for Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell. He
was ordered to look into the matter following allegations by a Time magazine
reporter that Chessani had covered up the November 19, 2005 murders of 24
innocent civilians by a squad of Marines under his command. Ewers was still Mattis’
personal attorney when Mattis decided to bring charges against Chessani on
December 21, 2006. He remained in the position when Helland took over
responsibility for prosecuting Chessani after Mattis was promoted to
four-star rank last November 1 and transferred. “The prosecution made a
colossal blunder not calling Lt. Gen. Helland to testify,” opined Thompson,
who presides over the Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center. “Folsom has already
decided there is evidence of inappropriate command influence and it is now
the prosecution’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it didn’t
occur. Without Helland’s testimony to corroborate Mattis they failed to meet
that burden.” Mattis testified that he was
not influenced by Ewers. Last month Ewers testified that he sat in on at
least 25 meetings between Mattis and the lawyers from Central Command
counseling Mattis about the Haditha investigation while Mattis was in command
of both organizations. Mattis brought the charges
against Chessani under the aegis of Central Command where Ewers ostensibly
had no authority or influence. At the time Lt. Col. Bill Riggs was the SJA of
Central Command. The defense maintains that
Ewers’ mere presence at the meetings by itself represents undue command
influence because he outranked the lawyers who were advising Gen. Mattis. According to both officers’
testimony Ewers was a potted plant that sat mute while Mattis was counseled
by Riggs and other attorneys of lesser ranks from Central Command. Mattis
told the court he remained an island unto himself and never asked or received
legal advice from Ewers while he was formulating his decision. It is not the first time
undue command influence has been charged. Riggs found himself in hot water
last summer after he contacted Lt. Col. Paul Ware, the investigating officer
in a related case, and criticized him for holding the government to too high
of a standard when evaluating the charges against an enlisted Marine. Ware, the IO in the murder
case against exonerated Marine LCpl Justin Sharratt, took the unusual action
of revealing what he viewed as an egregious case of undue command influence
by Riggs. “I viewed Lt. Col. Riggs’
comments as inappropriate and imprudent. … I was … offended and surprised by
this conversation,” Ware responded in an email. Subsequently Riggs recused
himself from that case. Military courts consider
unlawful command influence the most egregious violation of military justice
because it irreparably taints the opinions of prospective jurors, Richard
Thompson said. According to Thompson,
Folsom’s determination that there was evidence of undue command influence
forces prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that: (1) the facts
upon which the unlawful command influence is based are untrue; (2) those
facts do not constitute unlawful command influence; or (3) the unlawful
command influence will not affect the proceedings. External link: http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/NatHelms/NextBigDay_9June08.htm |