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Hearing in military slayings today
Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, accused in a fatal grenade attack in Kuwait, is scheduled to go before a military hearing today at Fort Knox to face charges that could lead to his execution. Akbar, 32, is one of the few enlisted men ever accused of the premeditated murder of an officer in a combat area, and the case has drawn considerable interest in the armed forces. Ya think? The military hasn't executed a soldier in 42 years, and not in wartime since Pvt. Eddie Slovak was shot by a firing squad in Europe in 1945 for desertion. The military adopted lethal injection as its method of execution in 1999. ...and Slovik didn't murder anybody. Akbar, a Fort Campbell soldier assigned to the 326th Engineering Battalion, is accused in the attack at an American outpost in Kuwait just after the war in Iraq began. The blasts killed Army Capt. Christopher Seifert and Air National Guard Maj. Gregory Stone. Attorneys for the government and Akbar have not discussed the case. But some experts in military law say it appears to be a difficult one for the defense. That must be why they're "experts". The hearing will determine whether Akbar faces a court-martial. William Cassara, an Augusta, Ga., attorney who defends soldiers in military trials, said that is "a foregone conclusion" in Akbar's case. "This case is going to trial," Cassara said. "The other purpose (of the hearing) is to allow the commanding general to decide whether it should be a capital case. And my strongest hunch is that it will be a capital case." Good guess, counselor. The case falls under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a system of disciplining soldiers that has been in force since 1951, when the armed services came under the Defense Department. But courts-martial have been used since the Revolutionary War. And although military justice has been criticized as outdated and unfair to enlisted men, it has endured with reforms, including a recent requirement that capital cases be heard by a 12-member jury and that a unanimous verdict is needed for a death penalty. The proceeding at Fort Knox is known as an Article 32 investigation, which is equivalent to a civilian grand jury or preliminary hearing. One of the primary differences between the military and civilian court systems is that in the military, a defendant can have counsel and testify at the hearing, said Scott Silliman, a law professor at Duke University and a former Air Force colonel and lawyer. "It's a fair system," said Silliman, who speculated that Akbar's attorneys may use the weeklong hearing to calculate a defense strategy. But J. Robert Lilly, regents professor of sociology at Northern Kentucky University, said the military justice system is stacked against defendants like Akbar, despite reforms since World War II. "The problems persist in regard to command influence, and the system very definitely focuses on those with least power, the least rank," Lilly said. Spoken like a true sociology professor... Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington, said Akbar may decide to testify on his own behalf at some point "if he has a story to tell that cannot come out any other way." But Dennis Hunt, a former Army brigadier general who taught law at West Point and who now teaches at Southern Mississippi University, questioned such a step. "Unless there is some astounding sleeper here, the defense cannot gain anything." Hunt said it would be prudent for Akbar's lawyers to explore a pretrial agreement to try to get the death penalty off the table. Translated: He's screwed. My heart's not breaking. Does he get the needle or does CAIR crank up the letter writing campaign to get him life? Posted by: tu3031 2003-06-16 |
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