Word: courts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Despite the rules, Americans have committed a disturbing number of atrocities in Viet Nam-and prosecution has often been prompt. In the I Corps area last year, for example, seven Marines summarily hanged a Viet Cong suspect and shot two others to death. At a court-martial, one defense lawyer argued that his client had gone through "hell" after seeing Marine bodies "burned and tortured, some with their testicles cut off." Nevertheless, all seven Marines were convicted and imprisoned, one for life...
What if a U.S. soldier is actually ordered to commit an atrocity? According to the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, he is justified in not following an order if "a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal." The trouble is that such echoes of Nürnberg are drowned out by every drill sergeant's most basic lesson-instant obedience. Under military law, in fact, a man who refuses to follow an order is presumed guilty of this offense until he proves that the order was illegal at his subsequent court-martial. Disobedience...
...pinpoint the source of the orders that Calley and Mitchell will claim they obeyed. No one has yet produced records specifying Charlie Company's mission on March 16, 1968. What Calley's orders were that day may not be known until his lawyers present his case in court and others corroborate or contradict his claims. One of the contradictors might well be Captain Ernest Medina, the company commander, who has not been charged and thus may testify for the prosecution that he gave no unlawful orders, and that Calley misinterpreted those that were given. If Medina is charged...
Federal District Court Judge Homer Thornberry was one man who profoundly sympathized with Judge Clement Haynsworth after the Senate rejected the South Carolinian for the Supreme Court. In a sense, Thornberry had been there himself. Lyndon Johnson nominated him to replace Justice Abe Fortas on the theory that Fortas would be moving up to Chief Justice on Earl Warren's retirement. Thornberry is depressed by Haynsworth's rejection. "Haynsworth was unacceptable because he is a conservative Southerner," Thornberry tells friends in Texas, "not because he's unethical." Then he adds: "The fight is gone from the Senate...
...Zurich last February, an Arab spokesman warned darkly that the Athens blast and the Swiss trial were "all connected." The Arab terrorists seemed totally uninterested in defending themselves. Backed by a claque of Arab lawyer-spectators from Algeria, Jordan, Libya and Egypt, the three denounced their court-appointed Swiss attorney and refused to answer all questions...