pikpik68
Member
Joined: 13 Jun 2005
Posts: 164
Location: Over the hill...
|
 Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:39 am Post subject: Army officer's second court-martial |
|  |
|
Below is a story summary of one man who fights for his moral rights by refusing to be deployed on the grounds that the Iraq war is illegal. He is the first commissioned officer to face the potential for double jeopardy, which is a violation of his constitutional right.
| Quote: | The court-martial of Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada is on hold after a federal judge in Washington state agreed yesterday to hear the Iraq war objector's arguments that another Army trial would violate his constitutional rights.
Watada, who was born and raised in Hawaii, had been scheduled Tuesday for his second court-martial for refusing to deploy to Iraq. The first Army court-martial of Watada ended in a mistrial in February.
Watada, who is based at Fort Lewis in Washington, had petitioned the U.S. Circuit Court for the Armed Forces to throw out the case on the basis that a second court-martial would violate his constitutional right not to be tried twice for the same crime, commonly called "double jeopardy."
Since that court has not ruled, Watada's attorneys turned to the federal court in Tacoma. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle concluded that his court had jurisdiction on the request for an emergency stay because Watada "has exhausted his available military court remedies with respect to his double-jeopardy claim."
The officer's father, former Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission Executive Director Bob Watada, said, "I am glad that the federal court judge is fair. We haven't had too much fairness out of the military judges thus far." |
For the full story of this news article: http://starbulletin.com/2007/10/06/news/story01.html
In my opinion, there is no need to continue wasting tax-payers money on mistrials that go nowhere or imprison the patriots, who deserves better treatment in light of whatever endeavors that may concern TPTB. One could love and defend his/her country not with weapons that destroy human lives (i.e. outside the Union like the Iraq war) but with the expression of individual rights (i.e. here in the United States like the Watada court-martial).
To read more on ‘what really happened’ on the Watada mistrial: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020807A.shtml |
|
