He murdered them in cold blood after they were bound and blindfolded. He admitted that he shot them in the head point blank. His defense was that he was "dazed from a lack of sleep and numb from being in a war zone for months."
From that ink:
“For those that don’t know, this is the way it works. If you meet the enemy on the field of battle, kill them, kill them in great numbers, kill them ALL, that’s called WAR. Once the battle is over, if there are survivors and they have surrendered to you, you are then responsible for their health, safety and all around well being. Those are the rules. A soldier, of ANY rank, can’t take the execution of prisoners upon himself. A bullet to the back of the head, point blank, along with the confession of Leahy, equates to execution, ie: MURDER, not the killing of an enemy combatant of the field of battle.
I don’t know what kind of military experience that Leahy’s lawyer had but his defense that Leahy was ‘dazed from a lack of sleep and numb from being in a war zone for months’ is one of the most lame excuses for a defense that I have ever heard. If those conditions were to become acceptable as justification for murder, every troop in theater would have a ready defense and an *out* for murdering any indigenous person they decided to kill.”
Then he deserves to be in jail for the rest of his life. I will assume it is at hard labor.