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CA: Next Hamdania hearing set for Tuesday - Pendleton 8
North County Times ^
| 9/7/06
| Mark Walker
Posted on 09/07/2006 10:02:00 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
NORTH COUNTY -- A pretrial hearing starting Tuesday for one of eight Camp Pendleton troops charged with murdering an Iraqi is expected to feature two days of testimony, a defense attorney said Wednesday.
The Article 32 hearing for Lance Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate Jr. will focus on his alleged role in the April 26 killing of Hashim Ibrahim Awad in the Iraqi village of Hamdania.
Shumate's attorney, Steven Immel, said he did not plan to take the same route that attorneys for two other accused troops did last week when they agreed to let hearing officers consider written reports only and not hear any direct testimony.
"I think this hearing will have a little more meat," Immel said. "The government's intention is to put on about seven witnesses and we are not attempting to close the hearing or anything like that."
Last week, attorneys for Cpl. Marshall Magincalda and Pfc. John Jodka III essentially stopped their Article 32 hearings just as they were getting started by convincing prosecutors and hearing officers to agree to no direct testimony.
An Article 32 hearing is similar to a grand jury proceeding and is part of the military's investigative process.
Instead, the attorneys said they would let the hearing officers determine their clients' fate by simply reading reports compiled by investigators. Jane Siegel, an attorney for Jodka, said airing the contents of those reports in the pretrial hearing could make it difficult to obtain an unbiased jury pool if the cases proceed.
Those first two hearings are not officially closed, but neither of the presiding officers has indicated whether he wants to hear live testimony before writing a report to Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force and the convening authority for the case under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Immel declined to say whether he would call any witnesses and would not say whether he planned to call the 21-year-old Shumate to the stand.
In addition to Shumate, Jodka and Magincalda, the Marine Corps on June 21 charged Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, Hospitalman 3rd Class Melson Bacos, Cpl. Trent Thomas and Lance Cpls. Tyler Jackson and Robert Pennington with premeditated murder, kidnapping, conspiracy and related offenses in the death of the 52-year-old Awad.
Each man was told when he was charged that he faced the possibility of the death penalty if convicted, but the prosecutor in Jodka's hearing said last week that the government did not intend to seek that punishment against the Encinitas-raised private.
In documents filed by the prosecution, the government alleges the men conspired to kidnap and kill Awad and then stage the killing scene to make it appear he was an insurgent planting a roadside bomb who had fired upon the squad as it patrolled the village.
Shumate is specifically alleged to have been one of the men who shot Awad with his M-16 rifle and later lied to investigators about what happened.
Immel said Shumate, an infantryman who joined the Marine Corps in February 2005 and was on his first assignment to Iraq, is not guilty of the crimes he is charged with committing.
"He is the kind of Marine we should all be proud of," the attorney said. "He's a kid who just two years ago was a high school football star who joined the Marine Corps and was trying to do his best in Iraq and just following the orders of those above him."
Shumate's parents, Jerry and Diann, also have maintained their son's innocence in interviews with the North County Times.
Reached at her home in the small town of Matlock in western Washington state Wednesday morning, Diann Shumate said she was in the midst of packing so she, her husband and their daughter could make the more than 1,000-mile drive to Camp Pendleton to be present for the hearing.
"I'm hopeful and I'm scared," she said. "My kids have never been in trouble and I just don't know what to expect."
She last spoke with her son Monday, she said, adding he has been battling depression as a result of being locked up in the base brig since he and his squad mates were ordered to return to Camp Pendleton from Iraq in late May.
"He's not used to being cooped up for too long and I know it is depressing for him and he deals with it by sleeping a lot," she said. "I just don't believe he or any of the other men have done anything wrong."
The men are all members of the 2nd Platoon of Kilo Company from the base's 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment.
Pretrial hearings for Bacos and Pennington are scheduled for Sept. 25 while the hearings for Hutchins, Jackson and Thomas are set for Oct. 16, although Marine Corps officials caution that any or all could be rescheduled.
At the conclusion of the hearings, Lt. Gen. Mattis will issue a decision based on each hearing officer's report. He could order their cases to move forward to court-martial, be dismissed or be subject to some other form of adjudication.
Another investigation involving a different Camp Pendleton unit and the deaths of 24 Iraqis in the city of Haditha last November is reportedly nearing completion. No charges have been filed in that case, which involves about a dozen members of a platoon from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment.
The result of a separate probe into whether Marine commanders in Iraq failed to properly investigate the Haditha case has been sealed until the conclusion of the criminal probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The Haditha incident has drawn much more attention than the Hamdania case, in part because of statements from U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who has alleged the squad killed Iraqi civilians in cold blood.
TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Government; US: California; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: california; hamdania; hamdaniya; hearing; marines; pendleton8
To: NormsRevenge
BUMP for support for the Pendleton 8 and the Haditha Marines.
2
posted on
09/07/2006 10:13:50 AM PDT
by
jazusamo
(DIANA IREY for Congress, PA 12th District: Retire murtha.)
To: All
3
posted on
09/07/2006 10:24:42 AM PDT
by
NormsRevenge
(Semper Fi ......Help the "Pendleton 8' and families -- http://www.freerepublic.com/~normsrevenge/)
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