Posted on 07/20/2007 10:08:27 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
A military jury on Friday spared a Marine of prison time for kidnapping and conspiring to murder an Iraqi man who was killed as troops hunted in vain for a suspected insurgent.
Cpl. Trent Thomas was sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge and reduced pay.
A military jury of three officers and six enlisted Marines deliberated for less than an hour before returning their decision.
Thomas, a 25-year-old father of two, faced a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. He was convicted Wednesday of kidnapping and conspiracy to murder an Iraqi man after a botched attempt to capture a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamdania in April 2006.
Thomas was acquitted of the most serious charge of premeditated murder, which would have carried a mandatory life sentence, and of lesser offenses including making a false official statement, housebreaking and larceny.
Prosecutors had recommended Thomas be sentenced to 15 years in prison with a dishonorable discharge, reduction in pay and forfeiture.
Sitting around in air conditioning passing value judgements on ground pounders doing the best they can, jeez.
I don’t listen to his program, so all I know is what I heard from a director of a defense fund.
At the height of the “Marines in shackles” hysteria, Savage helped raise $50,000. Then, when the plea was announced, that fund faucet was just turned completely off. The fund never got another nickel.
I believe Savage still followed the case (sort of). But he didn’t explain to his listeners what was going on. He seemed to accept the fact that one plea deal meant an admission of guilt for all eight.
I’m not beating up on Savage. He did raise fifty grand. But I thought that it was people on the Left who were victims of short attention spans and superficiality. I had thought those of us on the Right had a little more staying power and brain power.
PS to above: Okay, when I say brain and staying power, maybe not Hannity.
Don't know if it will make it to the page, but I just dropped the following at the NC Times web-story:
If you're willing to believe NCIS, then this was a travesty and Cpl. Trent Thomas should have been incarcerated. Apparently the Court's Jury did not believe NCIS, or they would have done more than discharge him out of the Corps. These cases are all under "Undue Command Influence", and while I believe that some charges may be true, the lack of honesty by NCIS, the politicalization by Murtha and his ilk, and the blind acceptance of the lies of the insurgents and their enablers by the Media have precluded any of these trials or hearings to get to the truth.Have you heard anything more about a Congressional [
Our jury system can be a wonderful thing.
That is proven with so little posts on this thread. It might be because it's "early" in the day.
Very sad but very true my FRiend.
Red, sorry about the private post. Pushed the wrong button ...
>> I had thought those of us on the Right had a little more staying power and brain power.
The costs are both financial and psychological both of which can often be managed if the public is willing to help out. Unfortunately, we’re starting out with only half the Country supporting the Military. The numbers dwindle from there.
A lot of this stuff gets back to the heavy financial hand of the prosecutors through a process that clearly needs to be overhauled. There should be some form of limits when the justice involves the Military. They should either cap the prosecutors budgets or provide some sort of matching funds for the defendant.
I have seen nothing further to indicate an investigation of the NCIS or a change of Winters views but I can still hope.
Do you think Sutton was intending to prosecute the Mexican doper?
What you have is sloppy paperwork by people not otherwise required to file paperwork.
Now USPS might fire a window clerk for coming up short a buck and a half (and I've seen that), but counting empty shell casings is not quite in the same category (which I can explain to you if you have half an hour or so).
This is much more like the situation I encountered about 15 years ago when the US attorney prosecuting a mailer had a Postal Inspector call me and ask what the value was of a postal mailing statement (Form 3602).
They had just gotten to the sentencing phase and this guy had been on trial for stealing blank mailing statements.
Since I was the fellow who certified ordering them for nationwide use (and ran the budget for all the forms the mailing public might ever run into) I knew the price. My response was to ask the PI "How many did he take" and the PI said, "well, it's a whole stack ~ maybe a hundred or so".
That'd cost us maybe 37 cents ~ .
The US attorney handling the prosecution about went out of his nut and threatened mayhem. Calls were precipitated to top management, etc., etc.
Sure some mixed wires there.
The guy walked, but not after spending some serious change defending himself from some idiots. I don't know if he ever went after his expenses, but he should have.
BTW, then, as now, USPS policy has been to give them away like water. Never could figure out how this guy ended up getting prosecuted for taking some.
The Sutton case has elements of the USPS 3602 case ~ right down to the crazy prosecutor and the careless investigator.
I think the business about counting the shell casings has to do with justifying government payment for ammunition used in "official business" (to wit, shooting at perps). The penalty would be for the officer to moxie up some bucks to reimburse the government for its lost ammunition ~ and then most likely only when the guy retires, or leaves for some other LE job.
A federale here can probably take us through the daisy chain of accounting for ammunition. Pretty sure "obstruction of justice" would come about if and only if the LEO attempted to change the official record regarding how many rounds he'd been issued out of company stores.
Hmmm. There's probably some guy who still hasn't closed the books on personal accountability for the ammo lost when the Murrah building went up. Wonder if Sutton's counterpart in that district is going to use the deficiencies to prosecute somebody else someday.
Trying to destroy or hide evidence can be taken as evidence of guilt. They shouldn’t have disturbed the scene, they vioulated regulations, and they should have been fired for that.
As I said earlier, they shouldn’t have been prosecuted for shooting the felon.
Let me guess - you’ve never had to formulate and express a logical arguement.
Thomas, a 25-year-old father of two
What kind of future does one have with a dishonorable discharge? How will he support his wife and children?
There were people there who heard the shots. Everything after that is little more than bean-counting.
Well said, Gene. I’ve heard the government spent $43 million to bring Haditha to trial.
Of course, they saved money on Hamdania by breaking the Marines through “unnecessarily strict conditions of confinement”. But, on top of that, the government still must have spent many millions to destroy lance corporals and sergeants.
“Thomas was held in a brig (including an improvised brig that was a toilet-less conex box out in the sun) for more than a year.”
So the P C Police treat another Marine hero like a dog!!
Man, I’m pissed off!!
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