Group will push for decision on ex-Marine

[thedrifter]

Group will push for decision on ex-Marine
Lawyers from Citizen Soldier take the case of a man charged with deserting during the Vietnam War.
By WILL VAN SANT, Times Staff Writer
Published January 4, 2006

A Tarpon Springs man arrested last summer on charges of deserting the Marine Corps 40 years ago has gotten some legal muscle behind him.

Representatives of Citizen Soldier, a nonprofit advocacy group for service members and veterans in disputes with the military, plan to travel today to Camp Lejeune, N.C., where 65-year-old Jerry Texiero is being held.

Tod Ensign, Citizen Soldier's legal director, said he hopes the visit prompts the military to decide Texiero's fate. He could be administratively discharged or court martialed and face prison time.

"Our position is that the guy should be released," Ensign said. "My god, he has been in a cell for five months and his crime was refusing to go to a war that is now generally discredited."

Ensign said he and another attorney plan to represent Texiero. During the visit they will meet with their client, his appointed military defense attorney and Marine Corps officials.

Citizen Soldier, founded in 1969, has lobbied for service members sickened in Vietnam by Agent Orange. More recently, the group helped defend Camilo Mejia, a Miami Beach man who served nine months in a military prison after failing to return to Iraq with his unit.

In the summer of 1965, as the Vietnam War was heating up, Texiero, a Marine Corps corporal on his second tour of duty, slipped away from a military base in Barstow, Calif.

By the time Marine Corps investigators tracked him down in August 2005, he was calling himself Gerome Conti and selling boats near the Tarpon Springs Sponge Docks.

As Conti, Texiero was on probation for a 1998 fraud and grand theft conviction, and fingerprints taken at the time of his arrest were matched to those in Texiero's military file.

For several months, Texiero was held at the Pinellas County Jail on a charge of violation of probation. A judge released him in mid December on a $10,000 bond so he could face the Marine Corps desertion charge.

Since arriving at Camp Lejeune nearly three weeks ago, Texiero's longtime friend Elaine Smith has stayed at a hotel on the base, urging his release.

The 58-year-old Smith, who made the trip from Pinellas County to North Carolina with her 84-year-old father, Leonard, said she hoped Ensign's visit would spur the Marine Corps to make a speedy decision.

"They need to know that someone is looking out for Jerry's best interests," Smith said. "These guys have years of experience with this."

Smith said Texiero told her during jail house visits that he fled the Marines because he could not see himself fighting in Vietnam.

"Jerry just isn't somebody that would condone killing," Smith said. "He just couldn't be involved in something that took the lives of innocent people."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

AWOL 40 years. Now what?
Jay Price, Staff Writer

The Marines are holding Pvt. Jerry Texiero in the brig at Camp Lejeune while they decide whether to charge him with deserting instead of going off to war -- in Vietnam.

In 1965, Texiero, now 65, ran away from Camp Pendleton, Calif. He went AWOL because he objected to the war, said Tod Ensign, one of his lawyers.

For decades, he hid in Florida using the alias Gerome J. Conti, selling classic cars and boats. He has lived a peaceful life for 40 years and should be allowed to go home, said Ensign, who is with Citizen Soldier, a New York advocacy group that counsels and defends war resisters in the miltary, according to its Web site.

Peaceful, perhaps. Law-abiding, no. Under his alias, Texiero was convicted in 1998 of fraud and at least four counts of grand theft, according to Florida records.When the Marines searched in 2005 for a match to the fingerprints taken when Texiero enlisted, Conti's name came up. He was arrested in Tarpon Springs in August and brought to Camp Lejeune on Dec. 14, said Lt. Col Annita Best, a spokeswoman for the base.

Officers at Camp Lejeune are expected to decide soon whether to hold a hearing on the evidence against Texiero, Best said. If he's court-martialed and found guilty of desertion, he could be sentenced to up to three years in the brig at Lejeune and get a dishonorable discharge.

Meanwhile he's in pretrial confinement. "I think there was a general concern that he was a flight risk, which makes sense if the guy was living for 40 years under an assumed name," Best said.

The Corps has about 1,200 AWOL cases, and Best said it will not ignore any of them.

"Just because someone has escaped justice for 40 years doesn't mean we're not going to pursue him anymore," she said. "Neither the amount of time that's passed or his age eliminate the fact that there was a warrant on him."

If the Corps doesn't pursue desertion cases, even older ones, she said, young Marines will think they, too, can get away with it.

Charge challenged

Some young Marines who go AWOL escape serious punishment by rejoining their units. That won't work for Texiero, though: He's 10 years older than the maximum age for active duty enlisted troops.

That's yet another reason it's wrong to hold him in the brig, let alone court-martial him, Ensign said. "We think there's a real legal question as to whether they've got jurisdiction over people who no longer can serve," he said.

He pointed to the case of Charles Robert Jenkins of Rich Square in Northampton County, who also deserted in 1965. Jenkins left his Army unit while on patrol in South Korea and lived in North Korea for 39 years, sometimes appearing in propaganda films.

In 2004, Jenkins turned himself in at a U.S. base in Japan and pleaded guilty to charges of desertion and aiding the enemy. He was sentenced to 30 days' confinement -- although he was released six days early -- and received a dishonorable discharge.

If Jenkins could get such a modest punishment, then Texiero, who certainly didn't aid the enemy, should go free, Ensign said.

Ensign and another lawyer from New York were coming to Jacksonville today to meet with Texiero.

They planned a news conference. Also present will be Elaine Smith of Tarpon Springs, a close friend of Texiero's, who will discuss details of his life in hiding.

The lawyers want a congressional investigation into the office that tracked down their client, the Marine Corps Absentee Collection Center in Washington. The center should stop pursuing the other 50 to 60 cases from the Vietnam era it's looking into, Ensign said, because those cases aren't about justice, but rather setting an example.

"I think the message is being sent to younger Marines, and that message is that if you're in Iraq and you're thinking about booking, we'll pursue you to the grave."

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Posted on Wed, Jan. 04, 2006
Lawyers: 65-year-old charged with desertion should be released
ESTES THOMPSON
Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - Military prosecutors have charged a 65-year-old Florida man with deserting the Marine Corps during the Vietnam war solely to serve as an example to troops in Iraq, his civilian defense lawyers charged Wednesday.

The accusation was quickly rejected by a Marines Corps spokeswoman, who said the Corps does not act against accused deserters to scare others in the ranks.

"It is the right thing to do," said Maj. Gabrielle Chapin. "The positive thing is the Marine Corps does look at each case individually."

Jerry Texiero is suspected of leaving Camp Pendleton, Calif., without permission in 1965. The Corps has held him at Camp Lejeune since Dec. 14, said base spokeswoman Lt. Col. Annita Best. If convicted, he faces a sentence of up to three years in prison.

The charge is "really sending a message to the troops in Iraq ... we will follow you to your grave," said attorney Tod Ensign, director of the New York-based advocacy group Citizen Soldier. "He's being singled out as an example."

In fiscal year 2005, there were 1,187 Marines listed as unlawfully leaving the ranks, down from 1,436 a year earlier, Chapin said. The oldest entry dates to 1943 for a Marine who would be 91 if he's still alive.

The Corps is also investigating Texiero for larceny of $5,490 worth of goods from a military exchange store in Barstow, Calif., before his desertion. Best said a charge originally filed in 1966 is no longer active, but may be reinstated.

Texiero's lawyers argued during a news conference Wednesday that the larceny accusation was a way to both discredit Texiero and intimidate troops serving in Iraq. They added that documents from the 1960s do not provide details of the alleged theft, but request an FBI investigation into the matter.

"Frankly, it's pretty unlikely that it would happen (today)," Ensign said, adding that a statue of limitations may also apply.

Texiero's lawyers plan to ask Camp Lejeune's base commander for his release pending trial, adding they were prepared to ask a federal court to order his release if necessary.

Ensign and fellow lawyer Louis Font visited Texiero on Wednesday morning at the Lejeune brig, and said he was haggard and in poor health. Texiero was arrested in August in Tarpon Springs, Fla., where he worked for a boat dealer, and kept in a Florida jail until he was brought to Lejeune, said fiancee Elaine Smith.

Texiero lived under an assumed name for years, using the alias Gerome J. Conti. The Corps found Texiero by matching fingerprints records against names of suspected deserters.

Texiero could have received amnesty after Vietnam had he known to ask for it, said his lawyers, who defended his decision to leave the ranks as a right bestowed by military rules.

"By going to Vietnam he would be forced to take part in acts that were war crimes," Ensign said. "He had a duty not to go. Do we really want to fight the Vietnam war again in court?"

When detained in Florida, Texiero was serving a 20-year probation sentence after pleading no contest as Conti to charges that he defrauded the owners of classic cars he sold in the mid-1990s. Ensign said the fraud charge was the result of a business dispute.

Elaine Smith said she and her 84-year-old father, former Marine Corps chaplain Leonard Smith, had been in Jacksonville three weeks waiting to see if Texiero would be released.

Ellie

[hrscowboy]

well at least one thing he didnt run to canada like all the other chicken ****tts did..