U.S. Army officials have charged a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserves, a St. Croix native, with the premeditated murder of his supervisor, who was shot multiple times last week at Fort Gillem in Georgia, where the two men were stationed. . . .

A pretrial confinement hearing held Friday determined Valmont will remain in pretrial confinement.

Military officials have charged Staff Sgt. Rashad Valmont with murder in the fatal shooting of Master Sgt. Pedro Mercado at Fort Gillem, U.S. Army spokeswoman Maj. Lenora Hutchinson told the AJC on Tuesday.

The report then goes on to say that:

The charge of premeditated murder was recommended Tuesday by the U.S. Army’s criminal investigations command . . .

So apparently the CID investigation is “complete” (for all that means to those experienced in dealing with CID).

The military has released the name of the man allegedly shot to death by a fellow reservist at Fort Gillem.

An earlier release said that the name of the suspect would not be released until there were charges.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that:

The Army reservist gunned down by a fellow soldier at Fort Gillem spent 29 years in the military, his family told the AJC Saturday night. Master Sgt. Pedro Mercado, 47, died from multiple gunshot wounds Thursday afternoon in building 941 at the U.S. Army Reserve Center in Forest Park. The married father of three was a New York native who lived in Stockbridge.

The New York Post quotes MSG Mercado’s wife:

“Pedro was a wonderful person, if you got to meet Pedro, you were truly blessed,” his distraught wife, Kimberly Mercado, told The Post. “He was all about work and family.”

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.

Defense attorneys for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Fort Hood psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in a mass shooting here last fall, won a four-month delay Tuesday in an evidentiary hearing that could lead to his court-martial.

Sitting in the same courtroom where he oversaw proceedings for two infamous Abu Ghraib defendants, Col. James Pohl ruled in favor of the defense, which said it had not received all the documents it needed – including a ballistic trajectory report now being done by the FBI in Quantico, Va. “We got what we wanted,” said retired Army Col. John P. Galligan, lead counsel for Hasan.

A Hohenfels-based soldier was sentenced to 8½ years in prison Thursday in a knife attack on a German family last summer. Racine, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, was originally charged with one count of attempted premeditated murder, along with several lesser charges, according to the official Army charge sheet. But after the three-day trial before a military judge, Racine was convicted of aggravated assault with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. But the defense argued that Racine thought he was in a war zone, and that he attacked the German family as he sought shelter in their apartment. “He was afraid because in his mind at the moment of the offense, he was in an enemy zone,” defense attorney Capt. Benjamin Wright said in his closing arguments. “In short, he was out of his mind.” Paul Montalbano, a psychologist from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, testified for the defense that Racine suffered from PTSD and was an alcoholic.

The sentence included RIR to E1, TF, and a DD.

Stars & Stripes reports.

[T]he accusers are 3 former Iraqi police and a former Iraqi intel officer who are currently detainees in Iraq. Reports have also surfaced that the detainees were allowed to speak with each other about their claims. It’s also feasible to conclude the detainees have ample motive to fabricate in order to deflect blame from themselves. In addition when an interpreter must relay testimony there is added room for error and inaccuracy.

There appear to be some ROE issues in the case, because of this reference:

Herschel Smith, writing about Rules of Engagement for Afghanistan at The Captain’s Journal, said, “Our problems with the existing ROE and RUF are legendary, and include the insurmountable initial problem that they are constructed around defensive operations and personal and unit self defense and include no discussion or guidance for offensive operations. This is why General Kearney wanted to charge two Army snipers with murder for targeting a Taliban commander who didn’t happen to be holding a weapon.”

The charges appear to be: two charges of premeditated murder and one of reckless endangerment.

Article 118, UCMJ.

Any person subject to this chapter whom without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being, when he- – (1) has a premeditated design to kill; (2) intends to kill or inflict great bodily harm; (3) is engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to others and evinces a wanton disregard of human life; or (4) is engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of burglary, sodomy, rape, robbery, or aggravated arson; is guilty of murder, and shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial may direct, except that if found guilty under clause (1) or (4), he shall suffer death or imprisonment for life as a court-martial may direct.

There’s no indication in the reports that the case is referred capital. Therefore, if convicted of at least one of the two premeditated murder specifications the punishment is either confinement for life or confinement for life without the possibility of parole. The reckless endangerment charge carries a one year confinement and a BCD as the potential maximum. The military has a unitary sentence so the maximum exposure would be one Life/LWOP, even if convicted of all of the charges. This is different to the civilian community where the potential maximum would be two life sentences and one year total.

Article 134, UCMJ (Reckless endangerment).

(1) That the accused did engage in conduct; (2) That the conduct was wrongful and reckless or wanton; (3) That the conduct was likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm to another person; and (4) That, under the circumstances, the conduct of the accused was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.

Here is a link to a Facebook page set up in support of CPT Bjork.