That is not usually the deciding factor in a Courts Martial, but it is a good thing.
This guy damn well better be tried by Courts Martial and by the US Army.
Still, it looks, on the surface, like his best hope is psychiatric care and life in military prison.
From my point of view, Courts Martial cannot accept insanity defense and if he is found guilty, he should be executed.
How many day's has it been and we still don't have a name? This smells.
I'm willing to bet the guy's a Muslim.
After all the bullsh!t we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of more than 10 freakin’ years, I don’t the U.S. military has the moral authority to charge this guy with any kind of crimes.
JHB is a take no prisoners attorney. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he knows what he’s doing; if there ever was a guy who could keep you from riding the big swing, it’s him.
"He wasn't thrilled about going on another deployment," Browne said. "He was told he wasn't going back, and then he was told he was going." From what little information I have..I am prone to side with the soldier. He could not be a slouch and make Staff Sgt.(and that was his rank after his first court martial and being rif'd. I want to know MORE about the doctors that gave this man a green light to go back. He had a serious leg injury and suffered brain trauma. Military would rather deploy a sick man than give him a medical discharge which would cost the taxpayers money. Panetta is trying to cut back on military healthcare.
Time for the people so quick to call this soldier a mad man or nutcase to reserve judgement until a in depth investigation is completed...maybe the doctors were madmen to send him back over...looks like they played a little mind game with him...first he was not going and then he was going.
In a CM do you pay for your own lawyer?
Not Jose Baez?
It happens in the fog-of-war. No excuse, but it is reality when boys (18 and such) are taught to kill! I'm surprised that this hasn't happened more often with all the repeated deployments our troops have had to endure in that worthless sh*thole of a country.
Still, if true, the sargent needed help. I can understand opening fire on the barbaric men anywhere and anytime, but women and children? Not acceptable.
11 years in Afghanistan. The Russkies knew better and pulled out after 9.
The story stinks to high heavens. A few lines from one story...
******************
“Sunday’s shooting rampage began in Balandi, a village about 1.5 kilometers (nearly a mile) south of the base.”
“Eleven were from one family. Five other people were wounded.”
“Two who lost relatives insisted that not one — but at least two — soldiers took part in the shootings.”
“Mohammad Wazir told the delegation that he was out of town when 11 of his relatives were slain at his house about 2:30 a.m.”
“It was the closing scene of a massacre that left 16 civilians, including nine children, dead in two villages in southern Kandahar province.”
“He said his sister told him that she heard gunfire and saw at least two soldiers firing inside their walled compound before she ran to hide in the kitchen of her uncle’s home nearby.”
“After the killings in Balandi, south of the base, four other people were gunned down in the village of Alkozai, about 1 kilometer (less than a mile) north of the base.”
“Sayed Jan said he was in the nearby city of Kandahar where he does construction work when the shooting occurred shortly before 3 a.m. at his house in Alkozai. He told the delegation that his cousins next door saw two men enter the house and gun down four people. The cousins ran to safety.”
“Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, said Monday in Washington that an Afghan soldier on guard duty reported seeing a U.S. soldier walk off the base. That report prompted a head count, which revealed that the staff sergeant was missing. A search party was organized, but others on the base could not find the missing soldier before the attacks occurred, Allen said.”
“Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. saw a U.S. soldier return to the base around 1:30 a.m. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4 a.m. said he saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m. It’s unknown whether the Afghan guards saw the same U.S. soldier.”
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/students-protest-us-soldier-killed-afghans-15907521
Seriously, think about some of it...it does NOT make sense.
The timing of leaving base (and how does one just leave base with weapons and a fair amount of ammo and it is only Afghan guards guarding?).
The time the US soldier is supposedly seen leaving base, the camp check, the timing of the killings (phone calls received by out of town relative would verify that timeline) He walks a mile South to a town, kills, burns, then walks a mile or so North to a town and kills. They appear targeted at particular families, oddly, ones where men are *out of town*?
There is TOO much that doesn’t add up...we are missing a bunch of information here and what we do have, stinks.
If he murdered 16 people then execution is right and proper, regardless of his prior service.
The "BB" is Colton Harris-Moore who, at age 20, stole airplanes, cars and boats while escaping apprehension after a series of over 100 burglaries in the Pacific Northwest and Canada.
He was captured in the Bahamas. He was sentenced to seven years after a plea arrangement in which, among other things, he agreed to forfeit any profits from selling publishing rights to his admittedly fascinating, unusual and daring criminal getaways.
John Henry Browne is by all accounts a highly capable and aggressive counsellor in his respected and respectable career.
Leni
We need to know far more about this case before the soldier is judged by us.
The rumors are that he just saw his best buddy get his leg blown off, and it was a 4th tour. Maybe we had better wait a little to see more facts.
Already 70 posts, and no mention of the possibility of government mind control of the soldier (the Russians supposedly have this). What was the timing of the Panetta visit. His previous head injury distinguishes the electrical “footprint” of his brainwaves enough that he was easily targeted for a mission such as this.
My diagnosis, if he did do it, is that he wanted to do it in the buff and listened to the voices in his head instead of taking meds. Could have been sleep deprived, and alcohol would not have been an issue. Paranoid affective disorder.