Under military law, England may not be charged if she believed she was carrying out legal orders from her superiors.
This suggests that the judge is either-
A) Taking part in a whitewash
or
B) Is convinced that England’s higher-ups knew about what was happening, & may have ordered it.
From what I gather, she pleaded guilty, saying she knew she was doing wrong. Then, when called to testify, Graner said he had ordered her to do the things she was charged with. So like you say, if she was following orders, she shouldn’t have pleaded guilty. The judge interrupted Graners testimony to admonish her defense (Graner was their witness, I guess) saying that the testimony from Graner was contradictory to her plea.
Sorry, no cite. This was just from a radio news blurb.
That’s my understanding too. Articles and quotes depict the judge as very annoyed with the defense. He feels that the defense is trying to have it both ways, as previous witnesses have said England didn’t know what she was doing was wrong, didn’t know right from wrong, etc.
He’s saying “you can’t plead guilty in return for a lighter sentence, and then say you didn’t do anything wrong. So either plead not guilty and face a long time in prison, or plead guilty and stop making excuses.”
If nothing else, testimony like this screws with the jury, so wouldn’t you have to declare a mistrial to get a new one in addition to needing the defense to get its shit together?
Actually, I think that’s supposed to be “may not plead guilty.” As I herard it explained, it makes plea bargaining harder in the military than in the civilian justice system. As soldier is not supposed to qualify a guilty plea with an explanation like “I did this, but I thought that, so it’s really more like the other way so that’s why I’m pleading guilty.”
In any case, it would have been more of a whitewash if Englund had plead guilty and that was the end of the case.
I choose “B”. This case has bothered me for a long time. I spent many years in the Army and served in Desert Storm. In my experience a Private in the Army is not even allowed to take a piss without supervision. I find it hard to believe that this Private had unsupervised access to prisoners. Another question I have is why are we only hearing about this one lowly Private? I mean SOMEBODY took the pictures. Why is the photographer not being charged?
Well, then there’s the whole bit about Lawful and Unlawful orders (a certainvillage in Viet Nam comes to mind) and when a soldier has a duty to disobey. If she knowingly obeyed an unlawful order to abuse prisoners she’s as cul;pable as the person giving the order. No?
I was totally confused by the article–Washington Post–I read on this yesterday. WTF?
When the judge threw out the guilty plea, what was the message?
The judge said that he “didn’t believe England knew what she was doing was wrong.”
Therefore, is he saying he believes she is innocent?
Or he is recommending to her lawyers that she should plead innocent?
Or is it an admonishment to the lawyers that they are doing a lousy job?
Or is he saying that England is mentally challenged?
IANAL, and so I don’t usually think in such pretzel-like ways, but I can’t remember reading a news story where I was so confused at the end of it, that I actually went back and re-read it several times trying to figure out what was going on.
She’s one of a handful of people who have already been through the justice system. Four others have pled guilty, and Charles Graner has been tried and found guilty. I’m pretty sure that one of these five were the photographer.
Inigo Yes, I was not suggesting that she is innocent. In fact I believe that regardless of anyone elses involvement, she should be convicted if she infact did what she has been accused of. Just because I think she is a scapegoat does not mean I think she is an innocent scapegoat.
(sidenote unrelated to anything in this thread I keep imagining over and over in my head you saying “I don’t think that word means what you think it means” )
MsRobyn Thanks I was not aware of that. The point still remains that no high ranking individuals have been prosecuted. Maybe none were involved, but that seem unlikely. IMHO
I think what’s going on is that England can’t say she’s guilty AND say she was just following “legal” orders. I think she needed to admit that the orders were illegal and she was guilty for KNOWINGLY obeying them, as opposed to just getting “caught” and being a scapegoat to her superiors.
In addition to the cover-up aspect of it, from what I read in the NY Times yesterday, it almost sounded like testimony from England’s elementary school psychologist made it sound like she was almost mentally retarded, and the judge was asking how could someone who’s mentally retarded plead guilty.
Graner is her baby daddy, so it’s possible that he’s saying this to keep their child out of foster care. (Plus, Lynddie’s family in WV says “she’s a good girl” and that’s good enough for me.)
Sampiro
Not sure where you are going with that last post. On a side note, are you in Alabama? Believe it or not I just ordered 3 slabs of ribs from Dreamland, they should be here by Friday. (I only mention this because of your location, if I am wrong about the Alabama part then disregard this)
She has not been aquitted- her plea deal has been thrown out by the judge and a mistrial declared in the penalty phase. She may now face a trial.
Graner fell on the sword to try and square her away. He’s already serving a 10 year term for the Abu Ghraib crimes.
Among other things, he said that he had looped the leash around the prisoner’s shoulders to “coax” him out of his cell, and that the leash slipped up around his neck. He then had his girlfriend hold the leash and took pictures he was going to use to train others in effective prisoner transfer techniques. That last bit contradicted her statement in her plea agreement, in which she stated that she knew that the photos were purely for the amusement of the captors, rather than having any legitimate military purpose.
Ivan “Chip” Frederick, the senior enlisted there. He pled guilty and got eight years.
Before going to Iraq, Frederick was a prison guard in Virginia. Graner served as one in Pennsylvania, and there were complaints made on him by inmates and coworkers for abusive behavior.
I often wonder why this particular fact hasn’t been reported more. For at least one of these individuals, no coaxing by higher ups would have been needed for abuse to happen - only a lack of supervision. And one bad apple could easily spoil the bushel here.
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