At sentencing, Nelson apologies for shooting

[thedrifter]

At sentencing, Nelson apologies for shooting
By Elliot Spagat - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Sep 30, 2009 18:41:30 EDT

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — A Marine was spared prison time Wednesday for dereliction of duty for killing an Iraqi detainee during a battle to recapture the city of Fallujah.

A military judge reduced Sgt. Jermaine’s Nelson’s rank from sergeant to lance corporal after ruling out a bad conduct discharge.

Navy Capt. Keith Allred sentenced Nelson, 28, to 150 days in prison, but a previous plea agreement ruled out incarceration. Under court-martial rules, Nelson got the less severe punishment. The judge didn’t know terms of the agreement until after announcing his sentence.

Nelson pleaded guilty Tuesday to dereliction of duty after the government dropped a murder charge. He remains an active Marine, eligible for an honorable discharge.

After the sentencing, Nelson told reporters his first priority was to get treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“If the Marine Corps will allow me to stay in, I’d love to stay in,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Nelson apologized for killing the Iraqi man, and the judge heard his taped confession describing the executions of four unarmed detainees inside a house.

Nelson told the judge he had failed the Marines by following his squad leader’s order to shoot and by ignoring his training. He said he should have left the house and asked superiors for help when he disagreed with his squad leader, Sgt. Jose Luis Nazario.

“I gave in to the peer pressure and now I have to live with it for the rest of my life,” Nelson said in an unsworn statement during the sentencing phase of his court-martial. “It’s like I slapped my own family in the face.”

Four Iraqis died after Nelson’s squad entered the home in November 2004.

For the first time, Nelson’s taped confession in March 2007 was played in court — a grisly account that Nazario beat detainees, killed two of them by shooting them in the forehead and ordered squad members to kill the other two.

Nazario’s lawyer, Kevin McDermott, said his client strongly disagreed with Nelson’s account.

“We are surprised and disappointed to say the least,” McDermott said in a statement. “Obviously Nelson was intimidated and worn down by the government. In exchange for apparently choreographed testimony in support of the government’s theory about what happened in a room in Fallujah five years ago during brutal house-to-house fighting, Nelson was given a deal.”

Nelson was the only remaining defendant in a case that has resulted in two defeats for the government. There have been no bodies recovered, no relatives complaining of a lost loved one and no forensic evidence.

Nazario was acquitted last year in federal court in Riverside, Calif., on counts that included voluntary manslaughter. He was beyond the reach of a court-martial because he had completed his military obligations.

Nelson’s squadmate, Sgt. Ryan Weemer, was acquitted by a military jury of murder and dereliction of duty in April.

In his 2007 confession to a Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigator, Nelson said he entered the Fallujah home to find a man standing against a wall and three men hiding under a staircase. He ordered them to lie face down on the floor.

Nazario and Weemer entered the home and a search turned up “about four” AK-47 guns.

Nazario, visibly angered, butted one detainee’s ear with his rifle. Nelson said he bandaged the wound. Nazario then kicked the detainee in the groin twice and shot him, Nelson said.

“You’re going to do one, Weemer’s going to do one and I’m going to do ... another one,” Nelson recalled being told by Nazario.

According to Nelson, Nazario shot another detainee and complained when blood spilled on his boots. Weemer then shot a man who was on his knees, Nelson said.

“He was just shootin’, shootin’, shootin’, shootin’,” Nelson said.

Nelson said he shot the remaining detainee. He didn’t elaborate.

The case came to light long after the battle.

In 2006, after he left the Marine Corps, Weemer applied for a job in the Secret Service. During a background interview before a polygraph test as part of the application, he was asked about the most serious crime he ever committed.

“We went into this house, there happened to be four or five guys in the house,” Weemer said in a recording of the interview played during his trial. “We ended up shooting them, we had to.”

The squad had been ordered to clear the house after one of its members, Lance Cpl. Juan Segura, was killed by a sniper.

Weemer’s account triggered an investigation that led to the charges.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

MILITARY: Nelson gets reduction in rank for Fallujah killing

Attorneys for acquitted co-defendants dispute Marine's version of prisoner killings

MARK WALKER - mlwalker@nctimes.com | Posted: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 8:25 pm

U.S. Marine Sgt. Jermaine Nelson was reduced in rank to lance corporal, but will face no other punishment for his role in the slaying of four unarmed captives in Iraq five years ago.

Nelson, 28, was given the light sentence on Wednesday after he agreed to plead guilty to two counts of dereliction of duty in exchange for dismissal of a murder charge.

A 150-day jail sentence ordered by the judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, was suspended as a result of the plea deal with Nelson, a New York native who lost his parents at a young age and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of repeated combat deployments.

The admission that the suspected insurgents were slain without just cause was a victory for prosecutors, who have struggled to get convictions in similar war-crime cases involving local troops.

In a Camp Pendleton courtroom Wednesday, Nelson apologized for taking part in the shootings, which occurred on the opening day of the largest battle of the Iraq war, the fight for the then-insurgent-held city of Fallujah on Nov. 9, 2004.

"I gave in to peer pressure," he said in a calm and steady voice as he stood ramrod-straight before the judge before sentencing. "I let down the Marine Corps, which is my family. It's like I slapped my family in the face."

Nelson detailed what happened in a taped interview with an investigator that was played in court on the final day of his court-martial.

He told the investigator he entered a home and spotted the suspected insurgents shortly after the massive fight for Fallujah began. Nelson, who was then a corporal, was accompanied by two men who also were charged in the case, but won acquittal at trial ---- former Marine Sgt. Jose L. Nazario Jr. and former Cpl. Ryan Weemer.

After Nazario radioed in the capture, Nelson said his squad leader reported being asked, "Are they dead yet?"

Nelson then told the investigator, "I knew where this was going and I wasn't going to do it."

Nelson said Nazario used the butt of his rifle to smash a detainee in the head, prompting Nelson to apply a bandage.

"I told Nazario to chill out," Nelson says on the tape.

But Nazario, who was acquitted at trial last year on charges he killed two detainees, was increasingly out of control and shot the man in the eye, Nelson said.

"Nazario said, 'I just did one, and you and Weemer are each going to do one,'" Nelson told the investigator.

He and Weemer eventually each shot a detainee, and Nazario shot the fourth, Nelson said.

"That's what happened inside that house ---- there's no sugarcoating it," he said.

The lead prosecutor, Maj. Donald Plowman, had argued for a reduction in rank to private and a bad conduct discharge.

"There was an execution," Plowman told the judge. "Marines comply with the laws of war. It's not a choice, it's an obligation."

Despite a host of evidentiary challenges, conflicting statements and two earlier acquittals, Nelson's prosecution was vital for the Marine Corps, Plowman said.

"It's important because not only do we have a duty to investigate, but also to discipline and punish violators appropriately," he said.

Nazario's chief attorney, Kevin McDermott, said Nelson's account of what happened is mistaken.

"Obviously Nelson was intimidated and worn down by the government," he said in a written statement after the sentencing. "In exchange for apparently choreographed testimony ... Nelson was given a deal. Jose Nazario vehemently disagrees with Nelson's rendition of what occurred."

Weemer's attorney Paul Hackett had much the same reaction.

"I ... believe that the brutal fight and chaos that Sgt. Nelson survived ... clearly negatively impacted his ability to accurately recall his experiences in Iraq," Hackett said in written remarks.

Weemer asserted self-defense at his trial at Camp Pendleton in April, saying the man he shot tried to wrest his pistol from him.

"I continue to believe that the military jury that weighed the facts and evidence in the case of Sgt. Weemer came to the correct decision in acquitting him," Hackett wrote.

Prosecutors were hampered in the Fallujah case because there were no bodies, no forensic evidence and no names for the four slain men. The incident came to light when Weemer told a Secret Service agent about the shootings during a job interview in 2006.

Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps judge and prosecutor who teaches military law at Georgetown University, said the Nelson result serves everyone's interest.

"The Marine Corps, which has been dogged in the pursuit of Nelson and his co-accused, can point to in-court testimony that conclusively establishes that there were wrongful homicides in Fallujah."

At the same time, prosecutors avoided the potential embarrassment of losing all three Fallujah prosecutions, he said.

As for the specifics of Nelson's sentencing deal, Solis said it was highly unusual.

"A pretrial agreement for no punishment remains more rare than a dodo in the courtroom," he said.

After the sentence was announced, Nelson said he hoped to remain in the Marine Corps. He has reached the end of his service contract and has been working at Camp Pendleton while his case was pending.

"I just want to get help for my PTSD," he said.

Call staff writer Mark Walker at 760-740-3529.

Ellie