Posted on 02/07/2007 2:47:14 PM PST by jazusamo
The military judge presiding over the court-martial of Lt. Ehren Watada declared a mistrial early this afternoon after prosecutors huddled and agreed they wanted one.
Lt. Col. John Head, who is presiding over the proceedings at Fort Lewis, set a new date of March 19. But Watada's civilian attorney, Eric Seitz of Honolulu, said that he had other commitments around that time.
It could be summer before charges are refiled and court action resumes.
Head threw out the basis for the Army's case right after lunch and asked prosecutors if they wanted him to declare a mistrial. Prosecutors took 30 minutes and decided they did.
At issue was a stipulation of facts that Watada signed earlier this week. In it, he admitted to a set of facts, including that he had a duty to board the plane that carried his unit to Iraq last June but that he intentionally missed the flight.
Questions over the "duty" portion arose this morning, causing Head to question Watada about the stipulation.
Under direct questioning from Head, Watada said he did not believe he had a legal duty to board the plane because he thinks the war is illegal.
"No, I did not believe I had that duty," Watada said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewstribune.com ...
see also: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1780928/posts (headline)
also: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1780861/posts
(not dupes - background)
Washington State ping
Big news (but I must say I don't get it).
Crap
I guess his unit is lucky this POS didn't go to Iraq with them . I doubt if he could be counted on to defend anyone or do his job when it came to crunch time!
I'm glad he's got a well definded dense of duty..( Extreme Sarcasm!!)
Quibbles and bits from this guy. One good thing is that Watada is not leading toops in Iraq now.
Thanks for linking those, xcamel.
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Moral: Going AWOL might be OK depending on the political ramifications...
Brian Suits is talking about this right now on KVI.
Brian made an excellent point a few minutes ago. He said he'd like to ask the lefty demonstrators:
"Is it OK for members of the military to ignore the civilian control placed over them?"
That's what he's doing. Great point.
I don't think its bad news, other than the delay of it. The stipulations that trimmed down the number of charges confused the case. In the stipulations he essentially confessed to the thing he had plead not guilty to. So... a mistrial probably is the only thing to do, and start over.
Maybe the bad news is that he's got time to get a better lawyer. It would seem the guy he's got is a doofus.
From what I understand, this guy was pretty crappy at his job anyway and was fired from at least one position in his battalion. He had kind of a made-up position in battalion HQ when he got his sudden attack of conscience.
"Well-defined sense of duty." Ha! That's funny, I'll have to remember that one. :-)
I don't think it's bad news either. As I said on an earlier thread, it will give the antiwar crowd a little more air time but I believe they'll recharge him with the two counts they dropped so he could end up with more hard time and that's a good thing.
Here's what I don't get. The jury is military, not civilian. How could a statement like that be enough to toss the case and start over?
Watada can just say the same thing next time and get a second mistrial.
There are thouands of court martials ever year and they can't get this right? I really don't get what's going on.
Is this the same striker brigade fighting right now in Baghdad?
Yes, I believe it is. I read it somewhere but can't remember exactly where because I've been reading so much about this.
My understanding of this is that Watada signed the statement and admitted that he's guilty of the very thing he's pleading not guilty to in the court-martial, ie ignoring legal orders and missing the movement by not getting on the plane.
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