Posted on 05/22/2008 5:40:30 PM PDT by RedRover
Sgt. Weemer is being prosecuted underthe military system. Sgt Nelson’s contempt citation is in Federal District Court, but that would probably be because the military didn’t have UCMJ jurisdiction over Sgt Nelson anymore. I know that the original prosecution of Weemer is military because of the Art. 32 reference - that’s a military-only proceeding.
Given where the courts have gone in this country, I kinda like the outcome.
Have you ever had anyone save your life? Would you testify against them or go to jail for contempt?
Nazario says it never happened, others say it never happened, others have ramblings accounts, the accounts don’t jive, others make statements and then clam up, and some simply get lawyers.
This sounds like a serious case of PTSD to me.
Something hazy happens in combat. You talk about it later and add a storyline to it out of suppositions and snippets. You get macho bragging making it into a taller and taller tale. You tell the story a few times and fix it in your memory as something that might have happened this way. In retelling and rethinking, you begin to believe the story constructed you created to describe something that was so hazy in combat that you’re not sure what it was.
It’s now a pattern that loops in your brain and gets triggered by sights, sounds, smells.
And it never necessarily happened, even though it’s a story you tell and you maybe believe it sometimes, because you’ve told it and remembered it.
What is the truth in it? The truth in it is that they cleared so many houses and shot so many people while hyped in the adrenalyn that accompanies fear for your life that they have jumbled many accounts into something that never happened.
Anderson, Percy
Born 1948 in Long Beach, CA
Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U. S. District Court, Central District of California
Nominated by George W. Bush on January 23, 2002, to a seat vacated by Kim McLane Wardlaw; Confirmed by the Senate on April 25, 2002, and received commission on May 1, 2002.
Education:
University of California, Los Angeles, A.B., 1970
University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, J.D., 1975
Professional Career:
Directing attorney, San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services, Inc., California, 1975-1978
Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, 1977-1978
Consultant, Legal Services Corporation, California, 1978-1979
Assistant U.S. attorney, Central District of California, 1979-1985
Private practice, California, 1985-2002
Race or Ethnicity: African American
Gender: Male
The 5th Amendment protects him from self incrimination. If he is asked to give evidence against someone else then the 5th doesn't apply.
The best way Nelson can help everyone is by saying, as is apparently the truth, that his memory is jumbled and he’s just not sure what’s real and what is male bonding fiction created out of fear, testosterone, braggadocio, and too many lonely nights with nothing to do but tell and retell the events of the last 1,2,3,4,5....12 months.
In short, “Judge, I think my memories are faulty and I can’t separate the real ones from the made up ones.”
LOLOLOL! I'm a Palm Treo guy myself!
And I repeat: It’s a beautiful thing to read about!
And Jesus Christ is a convicted criminal...
I've seen them first hand.
The founding fathers of this country were criminals, in the eyes of the British.
Stop with the bogus prosecutions, or we the people will stop it. Period.
There are plenty of real crimes to prosecute.
/johnny
As well as psychiatrists, doctors, rabbis, and others whom the court decides gained privileged knowledge that could reasonably be expected to be kept confidential. I submit that brothers-in-arms who depend on each other in life-and-death situations on the battlefield deserve the same consideration.
“He is charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act passed by Congress in 2000 to allow service members serving overseas to be prosecuted in civilian court for offenses that call for more than one year of imprisonment.”
In a civilian court, any prospective juror with the experience or training necessary to understand the situation of a soldier in in combat will probably be dismissed as being prejudicial. With the state of our judiciary, such politically charged cases as this will probably be steered to an activist judge, and there will be the usual carefully selected stupid jury. So now, thanks to the permanent imitation Nuremburg tribunal created by the ridiculous “Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act”, we can look forward to trial lawyers scouring South Asia for “victims” and “war crimes”, targeting whatever soldiers get in the way. The only satisfactory outcome is to repeal this stupid act and get back to the UCMJ. Until then lets hope and pray for lots of luck for guys like Nazario and Nelson.
McDermott pointed out that a comment made by a combat veteran self-medicating himself with alcohol at a bar “15 to 20 years from now ... ends up in federal court.”
>>Nelson told them he’d rather go to jail than rat out a brother Marine.
Well, he got his wish.
If subpoenaed to give testimony in a trial then you don’t have a choice. If you refuse then that’s contempt and you go to jail for as long as the judge wants to keep you there. It makes no difference if it’s a gangland thug or a Marine NCO.<<
Then the system is F’ed up. Tear it down and start all over - this time without lawyers & judges. Common sense will suffice.
If you ain’t been in combat, you have no idea what it is like. What we have here is another assault on American values. Take the strongest and judge it to death.
My hats off to these Marines. There DI’s taught them well.
Semper fi
I believe that this Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act was setup for civilian employees who were working in active combat zones along side of military personnel.
Please tell me why the UCMJ isn't enough? Or is it that this Act has been twisted from its origination in 1999 to now DEMAND that the military become double jeopardy targets?
Who's common sense?
It’s scary because I know that story-telling gets done and not intentionally. It just sort of builds over time and retelling.
Take the football ranger hero, Pat Tillman. Go here for a story that is so common in that the storyline had to be rebuilt any number of times.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/25/MNGD7ETMNM1.DTL
How many of us believe that fellow Rangers intentionally killed Tillman? I hope none.
Therefore, the Rangers who had been firing at enemies thought Tillman was an enemy. Their initial report would have been, based on assumptions, that he’d been killed in contact with the enemy. There are now so many stories and retelling of stories that it’s really hard to determine what exactly happened.
The point is this: what story do the Rangers involved that day tell? How many stories do they tell?
There’s also the Marine SOC unit that has been charged with killing civilians and not killing civilians. See here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1805834/posts
What do they tell? What is the real truth?
Here’s the truth — If we’re at different points of an intersection, and 4 of us see the very same accident, we’re going to tell something different simply because we all had a different angle on it. If you put us together, we’re going to compare notes and gradually develop a storyline that tries to take all the different perspectives into account. And, so, in the end, the final storyline is different than the initial reports and none of them are able to be called, “what really happened.”
Nazario and crew were in combat. Enemies were in houses. Lots of different jumbled scenarios. Enemies were killed.
MOST TELLING of all to me is that the owners of the house came home and found nothing amiss. That doesn’t seem to indicate that the house was later blown up by artillery or bombs, does it? Why didn’t they report dried blood all over the place? You don’t shoot 4 people in the head and then, in the middle of a firefight for your lives, clean it up and carry out the bodies. If Marine mortuary folks later cleaned bodies out of houses, why is there no report of that area with 4 bodies removed?
“If you win you get prosecuted, if you lose you get dead.”
Nazario is right on.
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