Latest Haditha Prosecution Implosion
THE DEMOCRACY PROJECT BLOG
OK, it may be the prosecution's job to put the best light on their charges, or worst on the defendant, but the prosecution of the Haditha Marines is again being exposed as lacking merit.
Yesterday, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports:
"The Marine officer who will help decide whether Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt should face trial expressed doubt yesterday about the prosecution's assertions that Sharratt killed defenseless Iraqis execution-style.
Lt. Col. Paul Ware said he was having "a great deal of difficulty understanding the prosecution's theory" that Sharratt and another Marine led four Iraqi men into a house, then executed them Nov. 19, 2005, in the city of Haditha. Ware is scheduled to make his recommendation on whether to court-martial Sharratt by the beginning of next month.
The prosecution's arguments aren't supported by forensic and other evidence, Ware said during the final day of Sharratt's preliminary hearing at Camp Pendleton."
Another local reporter at the hearing wrote:
"Lt. Col. Paul Ware, who will recommend whether to send Sharratt to trial, challenged the prosecution, saying the government's theory of the case do not warrant the three counts of unpremeditated murder filed against Sharratt in December.
"The account you want me to believe does not support unpremeditated murder," Ware told the lead prosecutor, Maj. Daren Erickson. "Your theories don't match the reason you say we should go to trial."…
Ware also suggested he is inclined to believe Sharratt, who maintains the first two men he shot were pointing AK-47 rifles at him, and that the killings were carried out in self-defense.
"To me it seems the most important issue is whether the Marines perceived a hostile threat," Ware said. "It comes down to credibility to determine if this case should go to trial."
Prosecutors filed charges against Sharratt based on interviews with relatives of the slain men, who contended they did not have any weapons and were herded into the room and shot in rapid succession….
Prosecutors agreed Friday that the case centers solely on the competing versions of events. The discrepancy among accounts is enough to warrant the case going to trial, Erickson told Ware.
"The seminal issue in this case is did the Iraqis have AK-47s?" Erickson said. "The issues in this case are best resolved before a trier of fact."
Ware seemed disinclined to order a trial, however, questioning whether any Iraqis would be willing to come to the U.S. to testify at trial if one is ordered.
Even so, Ware said forensic evidence presented by agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service who found multiple bullet holes in the walls and curtains of the room does not suggest execution-style killings.
"What the evidence points to is that the version of the Iraqis isn't really supported," Ware said….
[Defense attorney] Culp also suggested that the prosecution of his client is colored by politics surrounding the civilian deaths in Haditha, which generated worldwide condemnation when first reported by Time magazine in March 2006. Until then, the Marine Corps maintained the civilians died when caught up in a bombing and in crossfire from a small-arms attack on the troops.
"This is a new kind of war, and this case is a result of the new kind of warfare," Culp said, referring to insurgents who do not wear uniforms and mix within the civilian population. "There's also politics involved here, and the politics of the war is tearing at this nation."…
"He charged into that room at great risk to his own safety and killed those men before they killed him. He deserves a medal," the attorney said.
The New York Times, having relied in earlier reporting on leaks from "near" the prosecution to undercut the Marines, now surfaces with another "leak" that it hadn't formerly deemed fit to print:
In sworn statements provided to The New York Times though they have not yet been made public, Corporal Sharratt said that he and Sergeant Wuterich pursued the men into the house after observing them "turkey peeking" at their squad's convoy from behind a wall nearby.
Inside the home, Corporal Sharratt said in the statements, he saw one man near a bedroom doorway point an AK-47 at him, and shot the man in the face with his 9-millimeter pistol. As he entered the bedroom, he said, he shot a second man holding another AK-47 at waist level, from about two feet away. He then shot a third man whom he perceived as moving toward him, and a fourth man in the room, he said.
"I could not tell while I was shooting if they were armed or not," Corporal Sharratt said in a sworn statement, dated March 19, 2006, "but I felt threatened because the first two individuals had rifles and I assumed they had some sort of weapon."
"I believe I did not get shot by the first Iraqi because I think he had a malfunction of either his weapon or round," the statement continued. "While clearing the weapons, they all had a round in their chambers and were ready to fire with what appear to be full magazines."
Corporal Sharratt said that he had fired all the bullets in his handgun and that Sergeant Wuterich, who had been behind him, had entered the room and shot five to seven rounds into the "bodies on the ground to make sure that none were capable of grabbing a weapon and firing back at us."
Dr. Rouse said that none of the bullet wounds to the four bodies, which had all been shot in the head, appeared to come from shots fired closer than two feet away. Her testimony supported defense arguments that Corporal Sharratt had shot the men in a cramped, darkened bedroom in self-defense and not execution style.
But Special Agent Maloney, in a forensic report last year, concluded from blood spatter and bullet trajectories that two Iraqi men were shot "while crouched or sitting" — one against a wall, the other inside a closed closet.
In his testimony here Thursday, he reasserted those conclusions under questioning by a military prosecutor. But minutes later, pressed by a lawyer for Corporal Sharratt, Special Agent Maloney conceded that it was just as possible that at least one of the men had been moving in Corporal Sharratt's general direction, or diving toward a closet that may have contained a gun, when he was fatally shot in the head.
But whether the men were armed when they were shot remains an open question. The two AK-47s, which Iraqi witnesses said they saw marines carry out of the home after the shootings, were not kept in a secure locker at the nearby Marine base, and cannot be found."
Meanwhile, the family of Lance Corporal Sharratt reflects:
"The military justice system is a slow-moving animal," [father] Darryl Sharratt said before Friday's hearing, "and it could be days, it could be weeks or months until we truly find out the disposition of this case."…
"You have to stay positive in it no matter what," [sister] Jaclyn Sharratt, 25, said, "and our attorneys are doing so wonderful."
To the rue, and embarrassment that should be wider broadcast and publicly apologized for, of the prosecution and the New York Times.
democracy-project.com |
