US Defense attorney Darren Wolff pointed toward the witness and laid responsibility for the crime at his feet.
“You could have stopped it? You could have stopped that whole thing from happening?” Wolff asked James Paul Barker.
“Yes,” said Barker, a former soldier with the 101st Airborne Division.
The moment shows how the legal team for former private first class Steven Dale Green is defending him on more than a dozen charges over the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and the killing of her family in Mahmoudiya, Iraq, in March 2006.
A jury convicted Green of all the charges on Thursday, including eight that carry a possible death sentence. Prosecutors say they would ask a jury to impose the death penalty on Green in the penalty phase of the trial, which was scheduled to begin yesterday.
That’s where Wolff and his co-counsel, Patrick Bouldin and Scott Wendelsdorf, have focused their efforts.
“The goal has always been to save our client’s life,” Wolff said after the verdict. “And now we’re going to go to the most important phase, which is the sentencing phase and we’re going to accomplish that goal.”
Rather than swim against a tide of evidence and testimony from a group of coconspirators, including Barker, who have already acknowledged their guilt, the defense team focused not on whether Green is guilty, but on spreading responsibility for the crime to avoid a death sentence.
In doing so, they’re banking on the idea that the nine-woman, three-man panel will decide that Green shouldn’t be put to death because so many people were to blame for the events leading up to the attack.
“There’s a concept called residual doubt,” said University of Kentucky law professor Roberta Harding, who is not involved in the case. “It’s the idea that, while they’ve found someone guilty, enough doubt remains that they don’t deserve to be sentenced to death.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in