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Old 05-04-2005, 01:57 PM   #5
OnyxCougar
Junior Master Dwellar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Kingdom of Atlantia
Posts: 2,979
Quote:
FORT HOOD, Texas -- A military judge Wednesday threw out Pfc. Lynndie England's guilty plea to prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, saying that he was not convinced that she knew that her actions were wrong at the time.

Col. James Pohl entered a plea of not guilty for England to a charge of conspiring with Pvt. Charles Graner Jr. to maltreat detainees at the Baghdad-area prison.

The mistrial for England, a 22-year-old reservist who appeared in some of the most notorious photographs from the 2003 abuse scandal, means the case gets kicked back to the military equivalent of a grand-jury proceeding.

The action came after Graner, the reputed ringleader of the abuse, testified at England's sentencing hearing that pictures he took of England holding a naked prisoner on a leash at Abu Ghraib were meant to be used as a legitimate training aid for other guards.

When England pleaded guilty Monday, she told the judge she knew that the pictures were being taken purely for the amusement of the guards.

Pohl said the two statements could not be reconciled.

"You can't have a one-person conspiracy," the judge said before he declared a mistrial and dismissed the jury.

Under military law, the judge could formally accept her guilty plea only if he was convinced that she knew at the time that what she was doing was illegal.

By rejecting the plea to the conspiracy charge, Pohl canceled that plea agreement. The military grand jury proceeding, known as an Article 32, had been conditionally waived in this case as long as the plea agreement was in effect.

Graner was called a defense witness on the second day of England's sentencing hearing.
They aren't buying it.
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Impotentes defendere libertatem non possunt.

"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth."
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