US Military prosecutors scored a significant break in the case against seven Marines accused of murdering an Iraqi civilian when a Navy corpsman agreed to testify about what his patrol mates did that night in the town of Hamdania.
It was a sudden change in an oft-delayed case, but not necessarily a surprise -- turning a defendant into an asset can be a smart play for prosecutors needing a witness for their side.
And in this case, the plea deal could compel others among the accused to negotiate their way out of the case, experts in military law said.
Under the deal, prosecutors will drop murder and kidnapping charges against Petty Officer 3rd Class Melson Bacos, who in turn will plead guilty to two additional charges during a hastily convened court martial, his attorney said yesterday.
Bacos, a medic, was patrolling with seven Marines last April when they allegedly abducted and killed 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad.
All eight were charged with crimes including murder and kidnapping, and have been held at Camp Pendleton, the sprawling Marine base north of San Diego.
A former Navy judge advocate general said Bacos' testimony could be a blow for the Marines in the case.
"Almost inevitably it means that he will testify in someway or other against the interest of one or more of his co-defendants," said John Hutson, who is now president of New Hampshire's Franklin Pierce Law Center.
First to Turn
The Marines are at various stages in the military justice process. Two have been arraigned; preliminary hearings and other court appearances for the rest are set for coming weeks. Bacos is the first of the men to have a general court martial and will be the first to have his fate resolved.
According to charging documents, the troops entered Hamdania searching for an insurgent and, failing to find him, grabbed Awad from his home and shot him.
An AK-47 and a shovel, allegedly stolen from a home, were left by Awad's body, apparently to make it look like the man had been digging a hole for a roadside bomb and was killed in an exchange of gunfire.
Bacos was accused of firing the AK-47 into the air as part of the cover up. Military prosecutors charged him with murder and kidnapping under the theory that he did nothing to stop the alleged crime.
Laurie Levenson, a law school professor at Loyola University, said the deal could indicate the prosecution's case lacks physical evidence.
Bacos was recently transferred from the Camp Pendleton brig to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar for his own safety, said his attorney, Jeremiah Sullivan.
The youngest of the accused Marines, Private First Class John Jodka, was transferred on Wednesday evening. Jodka's attorneys are under a gag order and could not comment.
Domino effect
"Typically when there's multiple defendants, when one strikes a deal, others often do in a short time," said former Army prosecutor Tom Umberg. "You don't want to be the last guy standing, the first guy gets the best deal."
Marine spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Sean Gibson said on Wednesday it wouldn't be appropriate to comment on any potential negotiations between the accused and the prosecution. A phone message left for Gibson on Thursday was not returned.
David Brahms, a defense lawyer for one Marine, said Bacos' testifying made his job more difficult.
"This is like mountain climb-ing," Brahms said. "Sometimes you think you're at the top and there's an extra 500 feet [180m]."
Brahms said he was concerned about details that may emerge during Bacos' testimony that he would ask the judge to close proceedings to the media.
"This is a national story, and getting [jury] members who have not been impacted by the information is impossible," Brahms said.
Brahms pointed out that Bacos' testimony is one version of events and said he would cross-examine the sailor if his client, Lance Corporal Robert Pennington, is sent to trial and the government calls Bacos as a witness.
"This is just one guy who is going to tell the story as he sees it," Brahms said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RSS