Word: trialing
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After a two-day trial, a U.S. Army court-martial jury of three officers and five enlisted soldiers found Sgt. Evan Vela guilty of murdering an unarmed Iraqi man and guilty of helping to plant an AK-47 on him to make the killing look justified. It is a sentence that demonstrates the Army's willingness to hand down serious punishment to soldiers who kill noncombatant civilians. The jury ordered Vela to 10 years in prison, a reduction to the rank private, forfeiture of all pay and benefits and a dishonorable discharge. But the penalty was also seen...
...This trial was the third to come out of the May 11, 2007, shooting death of Genei Nesir Khudair Al-Janabil. The incident took place when an elite sniper-scout squad's mission went wrong near the city of Iskandariyah, which is 30 miles south of Baghdad. In separate courts-martial late last year, Sgt. Michael Hensley (who was the squad's leader) and another soldier, Pvt. Jorge Sandoval, were acquitted of murder charges. They were convicted of planting evidence...
During this trial, civilian defense attorney James Culp argued that Vela, who fired the single 9 mm pistol round to the head that killed Al-Janabi, was not guilty of murder because he was suffering from severe sleep deprivation, dehydration and exhaustion. Culp argued that Vela was not in control of, or even fully aware of, his actions. "You will not find a killing in this country more saturated with mitigating and extenuating circumstances than this one," he told the court today...
During closing arguments, Culp recapped several issues introduced during the trial that he said called the murder charge into doubt. He emphasized a medical expert's testimony about just how dangerous extended sleeplessness can be. In one study he cited, test subjects whose blood alcohol level was .05 performed better at a driving simulator than those who had been kept awake for 24 hours. And cognitive function and memory retention declines exponentially as one day without sleep stretches into two and then three. "This is the elephant in the room," Culp said. "How completely, utterly, totally sleep deprived these...
Vela's family, however, believes the sergeant has become a political sacrifice to U.S.-Iraqi relations. According to Vela's father Curtis Carnahan, who, along with Vela's wife, flew to Baghdad to attend the trial, "My son's commanding generals want somebody to be guilty of something so they can appease their Iraqi counterparts. They have tried this killing two times already and have no murder convictions to show for it. I don't think my son did anything wrong and I am optimistic the jury will agree...