Jury acquits soldier in Iraqi shooting death

msnbc ^ | 5/1/2008 | AP

[tobyhill]

FORT HOOD, Texas - A military jury Thursday acquitted an Army sergeant of premeditated murder in the death of an unarmed Iraqi insurgent who was killed in a village overrun by al-Qaida operatives.

The family of Sgt. Leonardo Trevino gasped, clapped and sobbed after the verdict in his court-martial was read. The 31-year-old from San Antonio also was cleared on charges of attempted murder, solicitation to commit murder and three counts of obstruction of justice.

Trevino said he felt betrayed by the soldiers who testified against him but that he held no ill will toward the Army.

[lilycicero]

WOW....

[DanielRedfoot]

Poor Murtha must be crushed...:(

[lilycicero]

Meant to ping you.

[Bigg Red]

Thank you, Lord.

[RedRover]

There's more details about this case at the LINK.

Congratulations to Sergeant Leonardo and Veronica Trevino and to attorney Richard Stevens!!!

[processing please hold]

Praise the Lord.

[PGalt]

GRRRRRREAT!

(ping)

[jazusamo]

Outstanding News!!

[wendy1946]

I’m trying to picture a prosecutor charging an American soldier with murder for killing a German (civilian, military, doesn’t really matter) in 1944, but I’m not getting very far with it; my imagination basically isn’t that good.

[RDTF]

really great news!

[IMissPresidentReagan]

This is how screwed up our society has become. We send our soldiers into a war zone, where distinguishing between ally and enemy is next to impossible and then we charge them with MURDER when they defend themselves.

[tobyhill]

The part moving it to trial is screwed up but this is good evidence that in most part the system does work.

[BJClinton]

From AP via Yahoo!

the soldiers who reported Trevino didn't come forward until two months after the incident and did so because they were upset with his disciplinary measures. Stevens said they wanted to get rid of him as their leader and had no idea their accusations — which did not include murder — would result in a court-martial.

If true those two need to face a court-martial.

[dynachrome]

Good News!

[tobyhill]

Just put the two back in his unit and tell them that no accusations they give against him in the future will be believed.

[RedRover]

Now THAT’s brilliant!

[loungeSerf]

Super news! Congratulations, Sgt Trevino!

Kind of troubling about the witnesses against the Sgt. I feel like I ate some rancid kimchee reading the defense attorney’s statement about them. I wonder what happens to those witnesses now?

[Gator113]

Fantastic!