Death penalty dropped against soldier

[The Smoking Man]

Can you believe this shit?

This is the guy who raped a 14 year old girl and then killed her and her parents in their home.

Just what do you have to do to get the death penalty in the US forces ... I mean other than be a member while Bush is president?

The rape of a minor at gunpoint followed by the murder of three innocent people to satisfy his lust ... and no death penalty.

And the US wonders why other countries take exception to their presence.

Death penalty dropped against soldier

By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago

The Army dropped the death penalty Wednesday as a possible sentence for a soldier charged with rape and murder in the deaths of 14-year-old girl and three others in Iraq.

Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, 22, now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted, said Maj. Don Lobeda, an attorney with the 101st Airborne Division.

Spielman, one of four soldiers charged in the March 12 attack in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad, sat motionless as charges were read during an arraignment hearing. An April 2 trial date was set.

Investigators said the soldiers tried to burn the girl's body to destroy evidence of the assault.

The killings in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad, were considered among the worst in a series of alleged attacks on civilians and other abuses by U.S. military personnel in Iraq.

"We look forward to trial and proving that Jesse was not involved in rape and murder," attorney Craig Carlson, who leads Spielman's defense team, told The Associated Press by telephone.

The military is preparing to court-martial other soldiers charged in the attack.

Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, is the only soldier now facing possible execution if convicted. Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, 19, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted in a court-martial next year. Both Howard and Cortez deferred entering pleas during their arraignments this past fall.

Spc. James P. Barker, 23, pleaded guilty last month to rape and murder as part of an agreement to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to 90 years in prison and is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

In a hearing last month, Barker did not name Spielman and Howard as participants in the rape and murders but said Spielman was at the house when the assault took place and had come knowing what the others intended to do.

Prosecutors have alleged that Howard was at a checkpoint monitoring the radio and knew what the others were planning.

Former Pfc. Steven Green, has pleaded not guilty in federal court to rape and murder charges. Prosecutors have not said whether they will seek the death penalty against Green, who was discharged from the Army for a personality disorder.

The soldiers belonged to the 502nd Infantry Regiment, which completed a yearlong deployment to Iraq in November.

Four other soldiers from the division's 187th Infantry Regiment also face murder charges stemming from the death of three Iraqi detainees near Samarra. The first of those soldiers, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, is scheduled to be court-martialed in January.

[The Smoking Man]

At last ... something sensible and intelligent happening in America.

Former US soldier faces death penalty

US prosecutors filed notice today that they would seek the death penalty if former soldier Steven D Green is convicted of killing an Iraqi family and raping a 14-year-old girl.

The notice, filed in US District Court, cites 12 alleged offences related to the March 2006 slayings in the town of Mahmoudiya, including that the deaths were premeditated, involved sexual abuse and were committed with a firearm.

Green, a former 101st Airborne Division soldier, was indicted November 1 in the rape and murder of the girl and the slayings of three of her family.

Three other soldiers have already been convicted in military court for their roles in the attack in the village about 20 miles south of Baghdad.

A court-martial for a fourth soldier is scheduled on July 30.

The rape of the Iraqi girl and the slayings of her and three family members were among the worst in a series of alleged attacks on civilians and other abuses by military personnel in Iraq.

Green was charged in a federal indictment with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit aggravated sexual abuse, murder, aggravated sexual abuse, aggravated child sexual abuse, obstruction of justice and four counts of use of a firearm in a crime of violence.

Green served 11 months with the 101st Airborne Division, which is based at Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border. He received an honourable discharge and left the Army in May 2006. He was discharged because of an "anti-social personality disorder", according to military officials and court documents.

He is being tried in a civilian court in Paducah, Kentucky, because he was discharged before he was charged. No trial date has been set.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said he could not confirm whether any other soldier has been tried as a civilian for crimes committed while serving in Iraq.

Green was arrested in June 2006 in North Carolina as he travelled after attending the funeral of a soldier who was kidnapped and killed in Iraq, investigators said. Since then, he has been held in Kentucky without bond.

Investigators said the soldiers set fire to the girl's body to destroy evidence.

Soldiers have testified in military courts-martial and investigation hearings that the 13-month tour for Green's unit, the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, was bloody and gruelling.

Dozens were killed in the unit's year-long deployment and half of the battalion, including Green, sought help for combat stress.

An Associated Press investigation in January found that an army psychiatry team diagnosed Green as a threat to Iraqi civilians four months before the rape and murders.

According to military documents, Green was treated with drugs to regulate his moods before returning to duty in a violent stretch of desert in the southern Baghdad suburbs known as the "Triangle of Death".

AP

[The Smoking Man]

G.I. Gets 110 Years for Rape and Killing in Iraq
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
A 23-year-old Army private was sentenced last night to 110 years in prison, a day after a military jury convicted him of rape and four counts of murder for his role in the attack last year on an Iraqi family in Mahmudiya, a hostile Sunni Arab town south of Baghdad.

The private, Jesse Spielman, was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit rape and housebreaking with the intent to commit rape, said a spokesman at Fort Campbell, Ky., where the hearing was held. The jury consisted mostly of Army officers from the fort.

Private Spielman is the third soldier from Company B, First Battalion, 502nd Infantry, 101st Airborne Division to be convicted of murder and rape in the case, in which soldiers sexually forced themselves on a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then killed her and her family.

In February, Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, was sentenced to 90 years in prison; last November, an Army judge sentenced Specialist James P. Barker to 100 years in prison. Sergeant Cortez and Specialist Barker will each be eligible for parole after 10 years in prison, according to Dan Christensen, one of Private Spielman’s civilian lawyers.

Prosecutors said the three soldiers and another private in their unit, Steven D. Green, who was discharged on psychiatric ground apparently before the Army learned of the episode, had barged into the family’s home, where three of them raped Abeer Qassim al-Janabi while her parents and 7-year-old sister were kept in a back room.

Unlike Sergeant Cortez and Specialist Barker, who each pleaded guilty to rape and murder in exchange for a term of years, Private Spielman sought acquittal at court-martial because, according to his lawyers and the other soldiers convicted in the case, he did not physically participate in the rape or murders.

“He didn’t rape anybody, and he didn’t kill anybody,” Mr. Christensen, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The next phase of the government’s prosecution in the Mahmudiya rape and murder will be the trial of Mr. Green, in a federal court in Kentucky.

Prosecutors have said he was the ringleader and enthusiastically urged the other soldiers to join in the attack on the family. It was Mr. Green, prosecutors say, who after raping Abeer killed her and her family with an AK-47 that the family was legally allowed to keep in the house.

Mr. Green is to be tried on murder and rape charges in the coming months. He has pleaded not guilty, but he faces a mounting set of witnesses and punishments.

As part of their plea arrangements, Specialist Barker and Sergeant Cortez, now in the Army’s main prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., have promised to testify against him. A few weeks ago, the Justice Department said it would seek the death penalty if he was convicted.