Marine gets 15 years in Iraqi's death

When people commit a crime (and the facts have been proven) they should be punished. The jury didn't belive it was premeditated or he might have been sentenced to life imprisonment. The reality of the legal system is that eyewitness testimony is needed to convict so some others who were perhaps as guilty were given lighter sentences in order to gain their cooperation in testyfying against the ringleader.
I think it is important both to punish and to publicize these matters so that it is known that such crimes will not be tolerated and that the US military takes such crimes seriously.
It also puts the lie to those who would claim(some perhaps even, here) that the US covers up criminal acts of it's soldiers.
Of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan there will always be a few who commit criminal acts. It is human nature. Nothing should be covered up.

 

I agree.

 

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Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III , has faced his judges ,

this war is abominable !

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..well ..i guess war is a pretty nasty thing all arround ..this war being not so nasty as many others in recent history ..i feel bad for the marine sgt but intentionaly killing civillians is just not a good policy and we cannot abide it..

 

No, we can't. When I was in the service, we were taught that you did NOT deliberately kill unarmed civilians! I wonder if they still teach that to the service personnel of today? :-?

 

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it has been said before , using combat troops for police work is not suitable ,
I presume there will be more such events if the moral of the soldiers deteriorate , the NCO are the critical factor ,
they run any army

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100 years

I read in yesterdays Daily Telegraph that an American serviceman was sentenced to 100 years for the rape and murder of a 14 year old Iraqi girl.

 

Yep. Unfortunately they can't give a worse punishment. :angry:

 

On that trooper convicted and sentenced to 110 years, by all accounts he'll be eligible for parole in 10 years......

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — A soldier convicted of rape and murder in an attack on an Iraqi teenager and her family was sentenced Saturday to 110 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 10 years.

The sentence was part of a plea agreement attorneys for Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman had made with prosecutors. Spielman was convicted late Friday of rape, conspiracy to commit rape, housebreaking with intent to rape and four counts of felony murder.

Military prosecutors did not say Spielman took part in the rape or murders but alleged that he went to the house knowing what the others intended to do and served as a lookout.

Spielman took the stand to petition jurors for leniency before he was sentenced.

"I don't really blame my chain of command. I don't really blame anybody," he said quietly. "I could have stopped it. I take responsibility for my actions."

Spielman, 23, of Chambersburg, Pa., received the longest sentence of four soldiers who have been convicted. Three other soldiers pleaded guilty under agreements with prosecutors for their roles in the assault and were given sentences ranging from five to 100 years.

Defense attorneys declined to comment after the sentencing hearing.

Spielman had pleaded guilty on Monday to lesser charges of conspiracy to obstructing justice, arson, wrongfully touching a corpse and drinking. The 110-year sentence encompasses those crimes, too.

The case stemmed from the March 12, 2006, rape and slaying of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, 14, and the killings of her parents and sister. The attack took place in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad.

 

Watched an interesting doco last night, a Brit journo was embedded with fast reaction Apache Co. U.S. Marines, and it showed the day by day experiences of the Co. in and around Baghdad.

The Marines got some info about an address and quickly descended on the place, forcing entry to be confronted by an old lady of about 70, and her Alsatian dog, [which quickly hid behind a chair] the Marines quickly searched through the house, scaring the life out of the old lady [and her dog] but found nothing incriminating.

Then there was an explosion outside, an IED went off, overturning and burning a Bradley APC, and the unfortunate boys inside.

The other Marines were distraught as there was little they could do.

Next day the Company returned to the same neighborhood, and were naturally wary.

A suspicious car was circling the block, and the film showed the Marines shouting at the driver to stop, and he either didn't hear, or was frightened and started to drive away, the Marines opened up with everything, and the car crashed into the curb a young guy slumped over the wheel, they dragged him out onto the front porch of the same old lady of the day before and tried to give the young guy first aid but he died.

It turned out he was a 19 year old part time taxi driver trying to find an address.

Mistakes like this are probably going on all the time, as one Marine Sergeant said he'd been in Iraq 15 months, and hardly got a break, just continuous patrolling, day in, day out, he said he'd do another 15 months if the politicians would come and do 6 weeks with him, to see what it was like.

 

110 years...might as well give him the life sentence.

It's quite lenient if they are allowed to go on parole after 10.

 

Kainda odd to do 110y sentence with chance to get out with 11x less sentence?

But newerless finaly they convicted somebody for crimes. Next step will be to US soldiers (like otther) go to trial on international courts.

 

IMO appropriate since it is not alleged that he actually took part in the crime beyond serving as a lookout.
The guy who allegedly raped and killed the girl her will go on trial soon. There is a possibility he will receive the death penalty, if convicted.

 

...in a letter home to his family a young ija officer newly posted to occupation of nanking in 1937 wrote "that the troops all have eyes that are not quite human ..they veiw the hapless chinese civillians with the eyes of a predatory cat , leopard eyes ,tiger eyes ..cold murderous ,hungry .." after a while the officers letters no longer mentioned the weird phenomenon ...why ? well because he too had become himself one of the stalking jungle cats
absolute power corrupts absolutely ..young soldiers ,trained to kill ,armed to the teeth , exposed to sudden death , after a period will become leopards ..the only lives that mean anything to them are their own and their imnediate comrads
the hittites, the roman legions , the ottamons ,the emperors hussars ,the ija ,the chetniks ...throughout history the civillian popultion that fell into the hands of an army ,any army , was in dire straights indeed .it is only in very recent times that certain judeochristian western powers have even thought to reign in the natural bloodlust of rampaging common soldiers ..in fact even today ,most of the worlds victorious forces are wether in africa ,in asia ,in eastern europe , in latin america , much more like ceasars army in gaul than like hershey bar GI joe in post war germany ..if not closly watched and very well disciplined , all armys the world over are hell on earth to the poor wretched civillians who lie in the path of that all consuming booted monster

 

Thought that as an accomplice, you were just as guilty as those who committed the crime.
Everyone should be sentenced to 110 years with NO parole IMO.

 

..ok .for example a 17 year old kid gaurds the front entrance and keeps watch outside in what he is told is a simple burglery ... while his two older parolee brothers enter a farm house ..tie up an entire family rape , torture and sodomize the mom and her 12 year old twin daughters in front of dad ,douse them all in gasoline and lite it ,but its not sufficient so they slit everyones throat and leave with $157 cash and a dvd player ...sry to be so graphic but these are the kind of" special circumstances " that get death the sentence convictions in the usa ( which many europeans seem to abhor so much ) ..btw these s.c. events are usually kept secret from the general public because of jury contamination ect ...my point being ..is the teenage brother guilty of the same crime as the two older men ? he is certainly an accomplice ..

 

Military prosecutors did not say Spielman took part in the rape or murders but alleged that he went to the house knowing what the others intended to do and served as a lookout.

Spielman took the stand to petition jurors for leniency before he was sentenced.

"I don't really blame my chain of command. I don't really blame anybody," he said quietly. "I could have stopped it. I take responsibility for my actions."

 

That is not the case under most systems of jurisprudence and certainly not the case to most juries. They want to know who planned the crime and who pulled the trigger and who was a willing accomplice and who was just so weak that they went along and didn't try to stop it and assign degrees of culpability based on those facts. Juries do this whether the law provides for it or not. It is human nature.

 

It may have been said but they can be if the correct training is given. The British have been doing it for years and although some bad apples do emerge, it can be quite effective.

 

As I have said before on another topic, sometimes i think that (in certain cases) soldiers should not be held to a slightly lower standard than civilian criminals if it can be shown that their crime was a result of the incredibly stressful conditions they were in...

The logic behind this being that defences such as 'insanity are available to the common criminal, and it is common knowlege that a soldiers' work exposes him to all kinds of psychological trauma... We pay him to do the worst job in the world, are we act schocked when he goes bezerk...