Posted on 07/15/2008 8:27:02 AM PDT by RedRover
Read the indictment here.
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A former Marine sergeant charged with killing captured enemy combatants in Fallujah, Iraq more than three years ago has taken another bullet from a California federal Grand Jury.
The Grand Jury has handed up a superseding indictment charging Jose L. Nazario with the added charges of Assault with a Dangerous Weapon, Discharging a Firearm during a Crime of Violence, and Causing an Act – in this case multiple murder – by two junior Marines under his command, the undated indictment shows.
The 28-year old former Riverside Police Department rookie and eight year Marine veteran is already charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter for allegedly killing two of four Iraqi combatants his squad captured in a fortified house on November 9, 2004. The junior Marines – unnamed in the indictment – allegedly killed the other two combatants.
Nazario was indicted last August by a different Grand Jury hearing testimony at the US District Court for Central California in Riverside and released on $50,000 bond. He was subsequently fired from his job as a police officer. Without money, he was forced to return home in New York with his wife and infant son until his case comes to trial August 19, he said.
Government prosecutors, apparently unsatisfied with the indictment, then went back to a new Grand Jury for more charges. During the investigation that began in November 2006 as many as 20 Marines, including Nazario’s platoon leader, platoon sergeant, and platoon guide, were either questioned by or refused to speak to NCIS investigators.
In the interim Sergeants Ryan Weemer and Jermaine Nelson, corporals under Nazario’s command in Iraq, were arrested and charged by the Marine Corps with murder and dereliction of duty. More charges against other Marines are pending if prosecutors determine who allegedly gave Nazario the order to kill the prisoners over the radio, knowledgeable sources say.
Weemer and Nelson are currently under open arrest at Camp Pendleton. Both men were released from a civilian jail on July 3rd after being charged with civil contempt of court by a federal judge for refusing to testify against Nazario or each other.
All three Marines, veterans of 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, are veterans of the renowned “Hell House” engagement in November 2004 that was heralded world-wide in the press. Weemer was shot three times at the Hell House, where Nazario was cited for bravery.
So far the government has been unable to produce any physical evidence to support its case. Defense lawyers say Nazario’s prosecution may be the first case in American jurisprudence that the identity of the alleged victims is unknown and unreported by anyone as missing.
Could also be the first case in American jurisprudence where a Marine or soldier on a battlefield was later charged with knowingly using and carrying a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.
How is it that this court has jurisdiction?
For background on the Fallujah case, click at the LINK.
And if the Obamination is elected, we can expect years of this sort of thing. Bush should issue a blanket pardon as he leaves office.
The deal is that soldiers carry weapons at the demand of their superior officers. If you can charge the troops, you can certainly charge the superiors, and do that all the way up the line to the Commander in Chief.
The defense should demand that all those who directed this individual to carry an arm to also be indicted and hauled before the court.
Give that juge about 10 seconds to toss the case.
The members of the grandjury should check into their nearest mental health facility for a checkup, and the prosecutor should be relieved of duty immediately.
Has the flipping world gone mad?
“How is it that this court has jurisdiction?”
That is what I want to know. I thought the crime had to be committed within the jurisdiction in order to charged in that jurisdiction.
That’s my question. As a JAG, I’m scratching my head on the jurisdictional issue...if he was overseas on military orders, CA has no jurisdiction, nor should the Federal District Court be stretching to exercise jurisdiction if the USMC didn’t prefer charges. The only possibility I see is that they discovered the “crime” after he’d been discharged and didn’t want to bring him back on AD to court martial him, and the Feds are pissed off that the USMC didn’t exercise jurisdiction. Still weak...
Colonel, USAFR
After Boumedienne we can look for many of these prosecutions, especially with Hussein O’Bama in the White house, potentially as many as troops who have carried guns or gaiven orders in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Court has redefined war as being not different from fighting crime in Chicago or Amarillo.
The Marines should fire all the lawyers and buy more bullets with the money they save.
It's because we have a SCOTUS in which too many justices are ignorant of / apathetic to the limits of their power.
They either don't understand the law of war or don't care that war is outside civil and criminal law.
The MEJA was passed by Congress in 2000 (I believe). It was originally intended as a means of punishing military contractors committing felonies in a war zone.
There's MORE at the link.
Actually, it’s Congress who gets the blame for this.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Excellent recommendation!
These Marines being issued a pardon won’t happen as W has his feet up & brains in neutral along with the rest of the GOP .
How can they prosecute this if these men have not been convicted of doing anything wrong? If Nazario were found guilty of these, and then these men were exhonerated, wouldn't they have to vacate the conviction???
But this is the prosecutors' old game of piling on charges in the hopes that something will stick.
At the core of all this is that they returned to the house where this supposedly happened and there is zero evidence, there is no one complaining, no bodies, no identities, no blood, no nothing. The corporals who talked about this are described as suffering from PTSD, drug abuse, recantation of their stories, prone to embellishment, etc.
Honestly, how can you convict a man of getting others to do something when you haven't proven that the others actually did the alleged something?
See #16
Why wait to issue the pardon?
Prosecutors are famous for piling on charges but this is ludicrous. Hopefully they’ll be at least one juror with a little common sense and the guts to hold out for a not guity verdict.
We have to hope there’s some good people left in Los Angeles. ;)
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