Death penalty dropped against soldier (rape/murder of Abeer)

[Barrett808]

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - The U.S. Army dropped the death penalty Wednesday as a possible sentence for a soldier charged with rape and murder in the deaths of 14-year-old girl and three others in Iraq.

Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, 22, now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted, said Maj. Don Lobeda, an attorney with the 101st Airborne Division.

Spielman, one of four soldiers charged in the March 12 attack in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad, sat motionless as charges were read during an arraignment hearing. An April 2 trial date was set.

Investigators said the soldiers tried to burn the girl's body to destroy evidence of the assault.

The killings in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad, were considered among the worst in a series of alleged attacks on civilians and other abuses by U.S. military personnel in Iraq.

"We look forward to trial and proving that Jesse was not involved in rape and murder," attorney Craig Carlson, who leads Spielman's defense team, told The Associated Press by telephone.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061213/ap_on_re_us/iraq_rape_slaying

[Poll_Blind]

1. Why? Simple question, really. Why?

  Premeditated in the extreme. Willful attempt to destroy evidence after the fact. Aside from the 14 year old girl, one of those murdered was a 3 year old.

Why?

Could it have been any worse?

PB

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Okay, so what exactly do you have do as a crime to warrant the

death penalty if this isn't it?

[MountainLaurel]

12. Do it to a Christian girl

And not one of those furrin' heathens.

[Selatius]

3. Watch, Jesse V. Spielman will spend only a few years in prison when it's all done.

Lt. Calley ordered the slaughter of hundreds of Viêtnamese and served not even a few years in prison before walking free.

He will be a free man, and he will be walking in your neighborhood instead.

[brentspeak]

7. Has the trial started yet?

You make it sound like he's already been convicted.

[Nihil]

8. Yeah, he's guilty. Who's on the jury?

Oops sorry, that was Saddam's turn wasn't it?

[mike_c]

4. I applaud the Army for dropping the death penalty....

The state should not be in the murder business, not even for the most heinous of crimes. But I hope this is not an indication that the court will seek a light sentence for what was in fact a terrible crime.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Heck, that brown skin again....

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Red Fox]

9. Well

Not in the same context in this case, but burning bodies indicates some sort of significance. Or at least it implies extra effort that was spent on the dead.

As the "fighters for freedom and democracy" don't even do body counts since the war started, there's no way of knowing how many civilians are shot dead and what their names are. They're not even significant enough to have their names jotted down and saved in a record. Heck, not even a number.

Such a disregard for human life is scary.

[uppityperson]

10. Life in prison without parole works. Don't believe in death penalty

even in this sort of case even if guilty. Life without parole works though.
RIP Abeer, Hadeel, Fakhriya, and Hassim

[Sinistrous]

11. My gut feeling is that the threat of the death sentence was

an attempt to coerce Spielman to testify against the others who were directly involved.

And, of course, I cannot back that up with one damn thing.

Sinistrous

[Kelvin Mace]

13. *sigh*

One of the MANY reasons I oppose the death penalty is because of the selective way it is imposed. If all the facts were the same, but the victims were American children, the prosecutor would be foaming at the mouth as he announced his decision to seek the death penalty.

[GreenZoneLT]

14. Spielman may not have directly participated

That nutjob Green was the guy who instigated the whole thing and did the rape, murder and body burning. They haven't dropped the death penalty for him, but he's also not being tried by a military court.

One of the downsides to unit cohesion is that guys will back up their buddies even when they do something heinous. It's sort of like the dark side of "community," which is the lynch mob. Don't see many of those any more in your disconnected, cocooning American middle class, do you?

[saigon68]

15. Ah yes the lynch mob-- a public festival of 'justice"

Lynching 1930

A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called the sentence of “Judge Lynch.”) Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy

[ljm2002]

16. Not sure about Spielman...

...but according to all of the stories, at least one of the other soldiers raped Abeer too. This was a group effort, sadly, and each and every one of them bears the blood of the entire family on their hands. You can't just stand idly by while your buddy commits the most heinous of crimes, and then say "oh, but it was not I who did the act" -- if you do nothing to prevent it then you are complicit.

I don't want any of them to get the death penalty. But I don't see why we should be more lenient to any of them, either. They all planned it, did their part to make it possible, either did the rape and killing or stood by while it happened, and then stayed silent afterwards.