Murder in Afghanistan

31 posted on Monday, March 12, 2012 10:01:53 PM by Future Snake Eater: “He’s not a Muslim. His name is withheld until formal charging to protect his rights and his family. This is a terrible, terrible event.”

32 posted on Monday, March 12, 2012 10:02:40 PM by dfwgator: “And you would know this, because?”

Army Public Affairs mottos include “maximum disclosure, minimum delay” and “bad news does not improve with age.” We can be confident that the name will be released sooner or later, probably sooner.

However, withholding names pending filing of formal charges does not surprise me. It is common though not universal law enforcement procedure.

In this case, the military may be investigating reports of multiple personnel being involved to make sure he acted alone before releasing a name.

While it's true that law enforcement agencies often do release reports of people being arrested in major cases before charges are filed, in a civilian context there are good reasons why that may not be done. It doesn't apply to this case since the military knows exactly who this person is, but it's not unheard of for people who are arrested by civilian police to provide false information on their identity and it may take a while for the police and court system to become aware that the person has given a false ID. That usually gets taken care of by the time charges are filed, and in the arraignment process the person is formally asked to verify their identity.

Here's what would happen if police didn't wait until charges were filed to release names. Imagine a situation where your local newspaper reports that your neighbor has been arrested for drunk driving, and then you find out two days later that when the driver was arrested, he didn't have his driver's license with him but gave the name of your neighbor to the police, had claimed he was too drunk to remember his social security number, but correctly gave your neighbor’s birthdate because his birthday party was held a few weeks ago. Your neighbor would be furious and there's a good chance he'd win a lawsuit against the police department.

Of course, sometimes there's a delay between somebody being arrested and filing of charges. In a civilian environment I can use FOIA or state equivalents to force law enforcement agencies to release reports of people who have been arrested. In a military context, being “placed under arrest” doesn't mean the same thing as it does in a civilian context and I'm not sure the media can force the release of that information.

In other words, I think the Army gets to decide for itself when to release the name of this soldier. We'll find out soon enough, probably in a few days.

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