Ex-GI spared death in Iraqi girl's rape, killing

PADUCAH, Ky. - A federal jury spared a former soldier Thursday of the death penalty for his conviction on raping and fatally shooting a 14-year-old girl after killing her parents and younger sister while he was serving in Iraq.

Pfc. Steven Dale Green will be sentenced to life, capping an unusual case of a crime in a war zone being prosecuted in civilian court.

Green, 24, of Midland, Texas, was being tried in federal court because he had been discharged from the Army for a personality disorder before he was charged with the Iraq crimes.

Green's defense team had asked them to consider the "context" of war, saying soldiers in Green's unit of the 101st Airborne Division lacked leadership. Defense attorneys also said the Army missed signs that Green was struggling after the loss of friends in combat and that it offered little help to him and other soldiers in his unit.

You can make a defense for killing civilians in a war zone in a fit of combat induced rage. Killing is a part of war, men can get caught up in that. In this case though, even that defense doesn’t hold up well. Then there is the matter of rape. Rape has nothing to do with combat. He should have been tried and hung swiftly while still in country. The Iraqi family should have been invited to watch.

Western Christian civilization typically operated on the premise that the State executing a prisoner convicted of capital offenses is not a sin ,but suicide is the unpardonable sin;therefore the priest or minister offering God's forgiveness before the criminal pays for his crime.

I think this scumbag should have been executed by the military,both because of the nature of his crimes and to show we won't tolerate our soldiers committing actual atrocities.

No.

Borderline Personality Disorder pretty much gets down to having a condition that creates an inherent inability to obey orders or work with group dynamics.

It's more complex than that description but it explains why soldiers discovered to have the problem are simply discharged.

You might have been praying to God every evening in your foxhole to be let out of the Army early, but unless you exhibited this disorder (or got wounded, or suffered frostbite, etc.) they wouldn't let you out.

Yet, these guys got out with no problem ~ and usually without doing anything.

Frequently the problem manifests itself as self-destructive behavior ~ drinking, fighting, and so on.

The army considers it a pre-existing condition ~ not one they caused ~ and they don't provide these guys much post service support as a result.

This guy organized a group to rape and murder a 14 year old and kill her family. I suspect strongly he didn't suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder but rather from something far worse.

Try: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/borderline-personality-disorder-fact-sheet/index.shtml

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