"Fort Hood and the rarity of military executions," is by Nomaan Merchant for AP. It's via the San Francisco Chronicle.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan doesn't deny that he carried out the November 2009 attack at Fort Hood, Texas, which left 13 people dead and more than 30 others wounded. There are dozens of witnesses who saw it happen. Military law prohibits him from entering a guilty plea because authorities are seeking the death penalty. But if he is convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that starts Tuesday, there are likely years, if not decades, of appeals ahead.
He may never make it to the death chamber at all.
While the Hasan case is unusually complex, experts also say the military justice system is unaccustomed to dealing with death penalty cases and has struggled to avoid overturned sentences.
Eleven of the 16 death sentences handed down by military juries in the last 30 years have been overturned, according to an academic study and court records. No active-duty soldier has been executed since 1961.
A reversed verdict or sentence on appeal in the Hasan case would be a fiasco for prosecutors and the Army. That's one reason why prosecutors and the military judge have been deliberate leading up to trial, said Geoffrey Corn, a professor at the South Texas College of Law and former military lawyer.
And:
The last man executed in the military system was Pvt. John Bennett, hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl. Five men are on the military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., but none are close to being executed.
"Victims to Again Face Gunman in Fort Hood Trial," is Manny Fernandez' preview of the trial in the New York Times.
Staff Sgt. Alonzo M. Lunsford Jr. usually worked in the back of the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, giving smallpox shots to deploying and returning troops at the Fort Hood Army base here. But on Nov. 5, 2009, he was standing at the counter at the building’s entrance after 1 p.m., so that his colleagues could take a lunch break.A soldier whom Sergeant Lunsford recognized, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, walked in front of him. Moments later, Sergeant Lunsford said, Major Hasan twice shouted “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” and opened fire.
In a matter of minutes, 100 rounds were fired, 13 people were fatally wounded and more than 30 others were injured. Sergeant Lunsford, who was unarmed, was shot once in the head and six times in the body. He had played dead, and then tried to exit the building, but Major Hasan followed him outside and shot him in the back, he said.
It is not unusual for victims to face their assailants in court, as Sergeant Lunsford will do on Tuesday, when he testifies on the first day of Major Hasan’s military trial. What is extraordinary is that Major Hasan, seated behind the defense table in a Fort Hood courtroom, may be the one questioning Sergeant Lunsford during cross-examination.
Major Hasan is representing himself, one of many elements of his long-delayed court-martial that legal experts say will make it one of the most unpredictable and significant military trials in recent history.
Related posts are in the military category index.
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