Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs’ big talk about killing Afghan civilians and getting away with it made him stand out when he joined a new platoon at an Army base in southern Afghanistan a year ago, according to written statements from his comrades. Some of his Stryker platoon mates from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., told investigators they didn’t know what to make of him. They thought he must be kidding. Now Gibbs is at the center of an Army war crimes investigation that netted 11 of his comrades from the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. They await their own trials for misdeeds they allegedly committed under Gibbs’ direction. Five soldiers, including Gibbs, are charged with murder.

Here’s a look at the charges Gibbs faces, and how his platoon mates described the incidents behind them. The information comes from sworn statements obtained by The News Tribune, as well as Army charge sheets, documents written by defense attorneys and testimony in court.

Huuuuuuuum, that seems strikingly similar to The Olympian.

The arrival of a birthday card in the ship’s mail addressed to Capt. Ronald Murray Gero, who was turning 56, marked the beginning of the end of his command of the guided-missile submarine Ohio.

It appears various members of the crew started collecting evidence, and then:

A subsequent command investigation — obtained by Navy Times through a Freedom of Information Act request — found that the relationship bore the hallmarks of an extramarital affair, but acknowledged that the participants likely did not have sex.

Here’s a News Tribune piece on SPC Wagnon.

Soldiers who fought in Iraq alongside Spc. Michael Wagnon don’t recognize their friend when they read reports of his alleged role in a plot to kill civilians while deployed in Afghanistan this year with a Joint Base Lewis-McChord Stryker brigade.

Milblogging has alerted us to the new Social Media Handbook released this week to the Navy.

The News Tribune reports:

Col. Thomas Molloy found that Spc. Jeremy Morlock should be held accountable for any actions he might have committed. Molloy noted that Morlock was viewed by fellow soldiers “as an effective, reliable, engaged team leader,” rather than the picture painted by defense attorneys of a prescription drug-impaired soldier who was bullied by his squad leader.

The defense appears to be focused on two issues: fear of the squad leader and intimidation by him, and the issue of drugs, especially in regard to the supposed confession (some of which has been released to the public. See my post about unauthorized releases.)

Army Times has reported that,

They could face the death penalty if convicted.

Is there any information that the Army will in fact seek a death penalty referral? I had understood, perhaps wrongly, that the Army policy is to disclose that at the time of the Article 32, UCMJ, hearing and ask the IO to address that aspect of the disposition.

Interesting court order (thanks Oh For Goodness Sake) in a civilian case involving a retired Navy officer. Here are links to 10 U. S. Code Sec. 771, 772.

A U.S. soldier accused of killing civilians in Afghanistan should face a court-martial on murder and other charges, an Army officer has recommended. The recommendation, included in a document obtained by CNN, comes after prosecutors laid out their evidence against Spc. Jeremy Morlock in a hearing last week. Morlock is one of five members of the Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade who have been accused of premeditated murder in a series of incidents between January and May. The recommendation goes to the brigade’s commander. It was contained in a document that summarized last week’s hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an Army-Air Force installation outside Tacoma, Washington.

Who released the IO report?

Base officials would not confirm the authenticity of the document, which has not been publicly released.

You will recollect that we have the recent unauthorized (?) release of the Article 32, UCMJ, report in the Coast Guard boating tragedy.

The Army has postponed a hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday for Staff Sgt. David Bram, who faces charges of conspiracy, striking another soldier, cruelty, dereliction of duty and impeding an investigation while serving in southern Afghanistan.

Military.com reports (no surprise here, the surprise would be not seeking a capital referral):

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s lawyer [Mr. Galligan] says he expects the Army to seek the death penalty for the Fort Hood shootings.

While UPI reports:

Galligan is likely to raise the “good soldier” defense, in part by introducing favorable officer evaluations. The defense also could contend Hasan had a mental breakdown.

Military.com reports:

Twenty months ago, Navy Sailor Darren Mackie, 22, killed his ex-girlfriend, Navy Sailor Caitlin Elizabeth Trask, 20, with a single bullet to the back of the head. Her parents are still waiting for the Navy to dishonorably discharge him.

I recently posted on that case here.

KansasCity.com reports:

An airman accused of having unprotected sex without telling partners he was HIV positive faces a[n Article 32, UCMJ, hearing 5 October].

SCOTUSBlog reports on an issue that might affect military prisoners:

Buried in this morning’s order list is an order that may be of special interest to members of the Supreme Court bar who represent indigent parties in the Court. The Court denied the motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) and for appointment of counsel in Sossamon v. Texas, No. 08-1438, a case being argued in November. The denial may signal a change in the Court’s criteria for granting IFP status at the merits stage in some cases.

SCOTUSBlog reports here on the issue of the court and its intersection with the “Digital Age.”

Opening a new Term on Monday, the Supreme Court once again indicated that it is reluctant to get deeply involved in exploring new issues about privacy in the Digital Age. Without comment, it turned aside an appeal by the state of Ohio, asking the Justices to give police wider authority to check out the contents of a private cell phone they obtained during an arrest. The case was one of nearly 2,000 that the Court refused to hear in its new Term. It granted no new cases beyond the 14 it added to its decision docket last Tuesday. The Court has said explictly that it does not yet have a broad enough understanding of new electronic technology to make major pronouncements on the constitutional issues that are arising around it.

Recordnet.com reports, by Michael Fitzgerald, “Medics bravery in battle finally recognized.”

The Army drafted Yagi on Feb. 19, 1942 – the very day Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, the Japanese deportation. Suddenly, the hard-working Yagis had no constitutional rights. At first, Yagi refused to fight. It wasn’t right. The Army initiated a court martial. Yagi relented. He would go – but as a medic.

In 2008 family members decided to look into their secretive relations military past.

And made a discovery. Tom Yagi was supposed to have received the Silver Star.

Army Times reports:

All Spc. Bryan Roudebush wanted was a legal high. Trying to get some relaxation, he sat on a balcony in Waikiki, Hawaii, and took five hits off a small pipe packed with a drug called spice. He stepped back inside, dozed off on the couch beside his girlfriend Ola Peyton, and then — as if in a trance — he beat Peyton senseless and nearly pushed her off the 11th floor balcony.

The Peoplesvoice.org reports:

Mickey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have been fighting the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for a very long time. Weinstein’s group is working to restore normal constitutional rights and practices in a military organization that has been hijacked by Christian Zionists who call themselves “Evangelicals.” The idea is simple. To get into the Academy or to remain there, un-raped, unbeaten, you have to attend regular “bible study” groups and continually mumble prayers. No Jews allowed. No homosexuals allowed. No Muslims allowed. It doesn’t stop there[.]

See here for prior posts on this subject.

The Army specialist who admits she murdered a Pierce County couple then kidnapped their baby two years ago will spend the rest of her life behind bars without the possibility of parole. In the conclusion to the court martial of Specialist Ivette Davila, military judge Colonel Stephen R. Henley also reduced Davila’s rank, took away all pay and allowances, and gave her a dishonorable discharge from the Army.

I say all but over because with a guilty plea the legal issues on appeal would be very limited. Knowing Judge Henley I would anticipate he did a thorough providency inquiry and that he was careful to ensure a fair sentencing hearing.

An Army Specialist accused of killing two fellow soldiers and taking their baby has changed her plea to guilty. Spc. Ivette Davila entered guilty pleas to two counts of premeditated murder and one count of kidnapping during a military court hearing Monday morning. It was not immediately clear whether the change was the result of a plea agreement with prosecutors. Officials said earlier this year that Davila could face the death penalty if convicted at a general court-martial.

The death penalty is off the table. You can’t plead guilty to a death penalty case in the military.

Seattle Times has this piece:

Spec. Ivette G. Davila, of Bakersfield, Calif., entered the plea Monday morning at the start of her court martial for the fatal shootings of Staff Sgt. Timothy Miller, 27, and Sgt. Randi Miller, 25, in the couple’s Parkland home. Army prosecutors have agreed to not seek the death penalty against Davila in exchange for her pleas to two counts of premeditated murder, and one count each of kidnapping and obstruction of justice.

Second Lt. Douglas Sofranko, a Florida National Guard officer photographed wearing a Navy SEAL Trident insignia he didn’t rate, has been relieved of his full-time duties with the Guard, and his future in the military is uncertain.

The earlier post, “Ooops I have to graduate?”, is here.

Military.com reports that:

Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents and Virginia Beach police are looking into possible threats against a local Navy officer who says he was subjected to anti-gay harassment while assigned to Oceana Naval Air Station.

deathandtaxesmag.com has this rather odd report on the astronaut case.

After a daylong hearing on Thursday, a Navy panel has finally suggested that Lisa Nowak should have her flying wings clipped. Her discharge comes in response to the time she famously drove from Texas to Florida in a pair of diapers and maced another astronaut over a love interest in 2007. However, if Nowak’s crush were a woman and not a man, this space cadet would be long gone by now.

The Arizona Daily Star reports that:

An airman who oversaw the armory at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base was sentenced to 19 months in prison Friday for stealing more than $25,000 worth of military weaponry, bullets and accessories and selling some of his haul on eBay.

The Record-Courier continues its coverage of the Davila death penalty case at Fort Lewis.

The court-martial of the woman who is accused of killing an Army couple in Fort Lewis, Wash., is scheduled for next week. Spc. Ivette Davila faces the death penalty in the March 2, 2008, slayings of soldiers Staff Sgt. Timothy and Sgt. Randi Miller. Davila’s general court-martial on kidnapping and murder charges starts Monday, according to Joseph J. Piek, spokesman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. The hearing is expected to last through Aug. 26.

Sounds like they really do have a PTA?

7th Space Interactive reports:

A former United States Army sergeant pleaded guilty today to bribery in connection with a fuel theft scheme to solicit more than $400,000 in bribes from a government contractor in Afghanistan, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A Breuer of the Criminal Division and United States Attorney Neil H MacBride of the Eastern District of Virginia. Michael Dugger, 27, of Jonesboro, Ga ., pleaded guilty today before United States District Court Judge T S Ellis, III in the Eastern District of Virginia to a one-count criminal information charging him with bribery as a public official. Dugger was originally charged in a criminal complaint filed on June 24, 2010. The complaint charged him and Stevan Nathan Ringo, a former United States Army staff sergeant in Afghanistan, with one count of conspiracy to commit theft of government property.

(A client until they whisked him off to prosecution in the E.D. of VA.)

Fox5News (Las Vegas) reports:

The Army isn’t saying what motivated the killings of three Afghan civilians, whose deaths have led to charges against a Nevada soldier and four others from Washington state’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The Army’s charging documents say all three of the victims were shot and two of them were hit by grenades in separate incidents in Kandahar Province earlier this year.

Seattle Times reports:

Five soldiers accused of murdering three Afghan civilians earlier this year allegedly threw grenades at them and shot them with rifles, according to charging papers released Wednesday by Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Two of the soldiers also are accused of beating a fellow soldier who might have been an informant, while a third is accused of trying to impede the investigation by asking a colleague to erase a computer hard drive which contained evidence of the crimes.

Last August, Travis Bishop refused to serve in Afghanistan. Having filed for Conscientious Objector (CO) status, Bishop, based at Fort Hood, Texas, in the US Army’s 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, was court-martialed and sentenced to 12 months in a military brig. He was released from the brig today.

Bishop served his time in Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Lewis, Washington. This military brig is notorious for being a particularly difficult jail to serve time.

gazette.com reports that:

A Fort Carson soldier will face court martial next week in the Halloween rape of a woman on post last October, two months after the soldier’s return from his first deployment to Iraq.

Eyewitness News 3 reports that:

The first cadet ever court-martialed at the Coast Guard Academy in New London has lost another appeal. Cadet Webster Smith has filed a series of appeals since his conviction in 2006. Now, his only hope is to get his case in front of the United States Supreme Court.

United States v. Smith, 68 M.J. ___ (C.A.A.F. 2010).

Checking – has a woman ever been executed as a result of a court-martial in the United States? The answer is no under the UCMJ. The two most famous death penalty cases involving women were Kinsella v. Singleton, 361 U.S. 234 (1960), and Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957). (These cases stood, until the recent change to Article 2, UCMJ, for the proposition that there was no court-martial jurisdiction over civilians except under limited circumstances. The constitutionality of the recent changes to Article 2, UCMJ, extending jurisdiction over civilians is yet to be tested.)

Noted authority on the UCMJ Frederick Bernays Wiener represented Mrs. Kinsella.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that:

As of June 30, 2009 there were 53 women on death row. This constitutes 1.6% of the total death row population of about 3,297 persons. In the past 100 years, over 40 women have been executed in the U.S, including 11 since 1976. See, Women Executed in the U.S. Since 1900 for the date, state, race, and method of each execution.

A 69-year-old San Diego County man has pleaded guilty to a federal charge for posing as a decorated Marine major general.

Navy Times reports.

Fort Lewis says an Army private will be court-martialed Tuesday in the death of a 16-year-old high school student in the barracks.

Seattle 911 reports.