Fragging suspect walks
I saw one of the widows who were complaining about this verdict yesterday on one of the blogs which linked to us. But apparently Esposito Martinez admitted to the fragging of two officers in Tikrit, iraq.. The judge rejected the deal he’d made with prosecutors in favor of a jury trial in which Esposito Martinez was acquitted and walked.
I hope the judge sleeps well at night.
Thanks to Jerry920 and Old Trooper for the link. I’m writing from the passenger seat of my wife’s car today, so excuse me for being brief.
Category: Military issues
Can’t watch it, Shep Smith scares me with his girl eyes.
correction to above it should say Martinez and not Esposito admitted to the fragging of two officers
and that Martinez was found guilty
Pathetic.
Pathetic is an gross understatement.
How could they fuck this shit up?
#5 OD:
Easy: They focused on the law, and not on justice. It’d be better if judges weren’t lawyers.
Oh buoy! The anti-war crews will have a new poster boy to lean on now…
The person who rejected the plea deal was a general and not the judge. The judge was Army Col. Steve Henley. He did not reject the plea deal.
Lt. Gen. John Vines, Commanding Officer of the 18th Airborne Corps and convening authority over the court martial, rejected the plea deal. He was not an attorney.
I’ve heard tales of troops fragging “shavetail Louies” because platoons feared their inexperience and over exuberance would get them killed. How much is a product of Hollywood and how much is true we’ll never know. I will say that in this modern army, we damned well better shake every bush and rattle every saber when we even THINK this happens we owe it to eachother, we owe it to ourselves.
you got to be fucking kidding me… the jury found him not guilty?!
I would be interested in the details. How on Earth could a jury have found him not guilty??!! This is insane.
And Double Jeopardy precludes another trial on the same charges, right?
You should be able to find out how the jury found him “not guilty” soon.
Earlier this year, the family of CAPT Esposito sued and won the right to obtain the transcript of the military tribunal proceedings under the Freedom of Information Law. The fact that they forced her to do so is disgraceful in and of itself.
Lt. Gen. Vice may have overplayed his hand in this case. In 2006, under his command, the Army convicted another soldier in a similar fragging case. In that case, the soldier received the death penalty.
Indeed I truly have no idea why the jury found him not guilty. Maybe experts in law can offer some explanations (like ‘100% guilty without any reasonable doubt).
I’m looking around online for any motives or reasons for the juries’ decision but nothing specific yet, only that they deliberated the evidence for several hours before giving their verdict:
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081204/NEWS/81204047
It’s sounds like the Army was so spooked over this fragging and so intent on making examples they tossed a plea deal and pushed a shaky case. Fragging is the officer corps’ worst nightmare, the ultimate boogey man from the bad old days. In the scramble to quash it they may have over-played their hand.
OK this link has some other interesting information:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/nyregion/21frag.html
This details how Martinez actually signed a plea deal admitting guilt in exchange for a life sentence (which means parole after 10 years).
Why Judge Vines rejected this is the big question (indeed he may have overplayed his hand for who knows what reason was Adirondack Patriot refers to). He has since retired and no longer answers any questions from the media.
From the link it states that the prosecutor, Major Benson, thinks personal opposition to the death penalty may have influenced the jury (which requires 2/3 majority to convict).
My personal opinion is that this personal belief against the death penalty, in addition to the confusion over the key eyewitness testimony, convinced the jury to not convict. By key eyewitness testimony I mean a Staff Sergeant of the 350th PSYOPS Company that testified during the court martial that she gave Martinez claymore mines her unit no longer needed. This was the key testimony that in fact motivated Martinez and his team to offer the guilty plea deal.
But, as article mentions, this same Staff Sergeant did not mention anything about giving claymore mines to Army investigators during the initial investigation.
Doc Bailey; I found several sources of info for you regarding the myths. First one is Here. The next and perhaps best source is going to be Scott Swett’s Winter Soldier. This one should give you a much better grasp of Vietnam “incidents”.
This piece of dog shit walks as a free man while good soldiers like MSG John Hatley rot in jail.
here’s a question… now that he’s not guilty… do they have to pay this fuckstick back pay and keep him in the Army?
He has long since been honorably discharged and living the good and free life somewheres in anonymity. I don’t think anyone’s been able to find his whereabouts. I’m sure he’ll come to this site at some point in time.
Hell, who knows, he might one day end up at a Guard unit near you.
Adironak Patriot: thank you, I sit corrected.
There are two reasons for Vines’ doing this:
He may have unduly influenced the legal proceedings. For a 3-star with his own personal JAG advisor, that’s a difficult charge to accept. It does happen though.
There may exist a charge that has not been prosecuted, and permits the death penalty. By cleaning the bench of other charges, the prosecution is clear to move forward.
There’s a third option: Martinez runs into vengeful ex-comrades.
@ DaveO #20
I wouldn’t want to see good men go to prison because of extrajudicial punishment they might inflict on this POS….
21 Miss Ladybug,
Neither would I. Something in the milk ain’t clean. I’ve seen GO’s summon their SJA for a discussion on cases such as these with the purpose of not unduly influencing the outcome of an Article 32 hearing, or an actual court case. Why Vines rejected the plea deal is nettlesome.