Posted on 07/15/2008 8:27:02 AM PDT by RedRover
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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