|
Key testimony and arguments
Day One / Monday,
July 16
From
opening statements:
Jack B. Zimmerman
Civilian defense attorney.
"He was taught that deadly force is the proper response to a
threat...We would have chaos on the battlefield if every lance
corporal questioned every order given by a staff sergeant....He did
what his country trained him to do. Now he's facing murder charges
and a life sentence.”
[Sources:
Associated
Press,
San Diego Union Tribune]
Lt. Col. Paul
Atterbury
Lead prosecutor.
-
Gave the court copies
of rules-of-engagement cards that were supposed to have been
distributed to Tatum's unit. The cards state that Marines need to
positively identify targets as having a hostile intent before using
deadly force.
-
“Marines have to be
held accountable,” Lt Col Atterbury said.
[Sources:
San Diego Union Tribune]
____________________________
SSgt. Justin Laughner
HET asset with 2nd CI
HUMINT Co. The staff sergeant was one of two HET assets assigned to
Kilo Co. on November 19, 2005.
[Source:
San Diego Union Tribune]
____________________________
Day Two / Tuesday,
July 17
LCpl Humberto Manuel
Mendoza
Uncharged member of
Kilo Company, took part in action in Haditha. Mendoza is not a United
States citizen and would have been deported if convicted of a crime.
He took immunity on December 18, 2006 in exchange for helping the
prosecution build a case.
Original statements to
investigators
-
In Haditha, he and
several other Marines, including Tatum, went to a house soon after
the blast. Mendoza said he shot a man in a room who was standing by
a closet. "He opened the closet door with his left hand and was
reaching inside with his right hand while looking at me....I shot
him several times. I never said anything to him."
-
Mendoza said he shot
another man through a glass door in a different house.
-
"I was following my
training that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot,"
Mendoza told investigators.
Testimony
-
Mendoza said that he
did not feel threatened in the house, even though he killed two men
as the squad moved through the area clearing homes.
-
In the second house
they entered, Mendoza said, he stayed in the kitchen while the rest
of the team moved inside. After several minutes of quiet, Mendoza
said he ventured down a hall to a room with a closed door. (Mendoza
pointed at a large diagram of an Iraqi house to show his movements.)
-
Mendoza claims he
opened the door and found women and children cowering. They were
alive, he said, and scared. And they were looking at him.
-
Mendoza claims he
closed the door and told Tatum what he had seen. "I told him that
there's womens and kids in that room," Mendoza (whose native
language is not English) testified. According to Mendoza, Tatum
replied, "Well, shoot them."
-
"Was he joking?" Lt Col
Atterbury asked. "No sir, he was very serious," Mendoza replied.
-
Mendoza claimed, "I
replied, 'There's just womens and kids. There's no males, no threat,
no hostile situation.' "
-
Mendoza said that when
he refused the order, Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum brushed past him and
headed into the room himself. "Next thing I know, I hear a lot of
noise in the house," Mendoza said.
-
Lt Col Atterbury asked
Mendoza whether he had asked Tatum what happened. "I just didn't
want to ask him," Mendoza replied. "Why didn't you want to ask?"
Atterbury said. "I dunno, sir, I just ..." Mendoza said, not
finishing his thought, but sitting silently and looking away.
-
Mendoza returned to the
home hours later as part of a team assigned to collect bodies. "I
found all of the womens and childrens dead," Mendoza testified.
"They got multiple wounds everywhere."
LCpl Tatum's attorneys
flatly dispute the claims from Mendoza, who has acknowledged on the
stand that he initially lied to investigators about the incident and
did not report the conversation with Tatum for more than a year. The
defendant's lawyers also point to a polygraph test their client
passed. Mendoza -- who admitted to killing two unarmed men during the
melee -- was granted immunity from prosecution for his testimony.
Jack B. Zimmerman told
the court that a 13-year-old survivor in the back room said the
shooter was shorter than she was. Mendoza is 5 feet 4 inches tall,
while Tatum is 6-foot-2. Zimmerman asked why Mendoza had not offered
this version of events when initially questioned by investigators. He
suggested that Mendoza, a Venezuelan citizen, was worried that he
could lose the chance to become a U.S. citizen.
According to a report by
the Naval Criminal Investigative Service dated May 17, 2006, Tatum
told investigators that he shot women and children because "women and
kids can hurt you too." He went on to say he later felt remorseful
about the incident.
-
In cross-examination,
Zimmerman brought up a polygraph test Mendoza failed after changing
his account of events.
-
Mendoza replied he was
telling the truth, and freely admitted lying initially to protect
his fellow Marines.
-
"You'd lie to protect
your fellow Marines, but not to help yourself?" Zimmerman asked.
"Yes," Mendoza said.
Mendoza, a Venezuelan
citizen, has an application for U.S. citizenship pending. That
application would be denied if he were charged with any crime, he
acknowledged. But he said that he had not told any government lawyers
about the content of his testimony before he was granted immunity in
December 2006, shortly before charges were filed against Tatum and
other Marines.
[Source:
Associated Press,
North County Times,
Washington Post]
____________________________
Sgt. Sanick P. Dela
Cruz
Uncharged member of
Kilo Company, took part in action in Haditha.
-
Testified that, in
January 2006, Tatum poked fun at a squadmate who asked permission
before shooting and said he thought the war should be fought the way
it was in Biblical scriptures, “where you just go in the city and
kill every living thing.”
-
Claimed that, in
Haditha, Tatum entered an Iraqi home near the bomb site where
Marines had found more than $5,000 in U.S. currency and suggested
that the money should be sent to the family of their fallen comrade
to pay for a funeral. “I think he was serious,” Dela Cruz said.
Tatum did not take the money in the end.
- Testified that LCpl Tatum left a telling signature on a gift to
the parents of the Marine killed by the IED. All the squad members
signed a pack the young man had owned, he said. Near Tatum's
signature were 24 hatch marks -- the number of civilians killed at
Haditha -- and an inscription reading, "This one's for you."
Zimmerman suggested that the inscription referred to a rosary Tatum
attached to the pack.
[Source:
Associated Press,
Washington Post]
____________________________
Day Three / Wednesday,
July 18
Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Brian
Brittingham
Lead agent in the Tatum case.
-
Testified that the first
interrogation of LCpl Tatum lasted 12 hours.
It took place
in the subterranean dungeon of Haditha dam--a foul, dark,
concrete room that stinks of urine and is usually reserved for
interviews with insurgents. Brittingham claimed it was the only room
the Marines made available to them.
-
Brittingham also said he
interviewed Iraqi children who survived in houses one and two: Eman
Waleen Al Hameed,
Safa Younis, and
Abid Al Rahman Waleed Al Hameed.
[Sources:
North County Times and a hearing observer for Defend Our Marines]
____________________________
Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Matthew
Marshall
Interrogated LCpl Tatum in March 2006.
-
Testified that LCpl Tatum told NCIS that he saw a child --
young, dark-haired, wearing a white T-shirt and standing on a bed in
his Haditha home -- and pulled the trigger. According to Marshall,
"There was a pause, a little hesitation, and then he said, 'That's
the room where I saw the kid that I shot. Knowing it was a kid, I
shot him anyway."
-
Marshall recounted what
Tatum told the investigative service about the second home he
cleared during the Haditha incident. He and three other Marines
followed a fleeing person from the first home to the second. There,
they shot a man at a door and lobbed a grenade into a washroom.
-
According to Marshall,
Tatum heard M-16 rifle fire coming from a room that Staff Sgt. Frank
Wuterich had just entered. Then Tatum rushed to Wuterich's aid. "He
rolled into the room and began picking out targets. He ID'd them as
women and children," Marshall testified.
-
"I asked if he shot
them, and he said yes. He was very emotional about it, very sorry to
the point that he cried."
-
In a later interview,
Marshall testified, Tatum again told him he knew the people were
women and children. "He stated that women and children can hurt you,
too, as justification for shooting them," Marshall said.
-
Marshall claims the
reports he generated after questioning Tatum were "factual
representations" of what was said. But none of the interrogations
were recorded.
-
Marshall also
acknowledged that Tatum had told him at least once that he had
"unknowingly" shot women and children.
LCpl Tatum's attorneys
dispute everything that Marshall claims Tatum told him. Tatum never
swore to or signed the statements that Marshall said he made. They
also argue that the statements attributed to their client are
inadmissible in court.
-
They criticized the
agency's agents for failing to make audio or video recordings of any
of the interviews.
-
The first session
between the agents and Tatum took place May 9, 2006. Defense lawyers
Jack Zimmerman and Kyle Sampson said the interview should have
stopped immediately after Tatum asked for an attorney. Tatum made
the request after becoming angry about an agent's insult. That
agent, a former Marine, had said the actions of Tatum's platoon in
Haditha made him feel ashamed. (An impartial investigation?
Throughout these hearings, the NCIS has shown that it predetermined
the guilt of the Marines.)
-
After the agent
apologized, Tatum signed a statement agreeing to continue the
interview without a lawyer.
[Sources:
North County Times and a hearing observer for Defend Our Marines]
____________________________
Day Four / Thursday,
July 19
Lt. Col. Elizabeth
Rouse
Forensic pathologist
and medical examiner asked by the prosecutor to determine how the
victims had died.
-
The pictures provided
to her were far less than ideal for such analysis, with the victims
still dressed and their wounds not always visible.
-
"The photographs were
all that was available," Rouse testified. Families of the dead
refused to let investigators exhume the bodies.
-
Many of the photos
Rouse reviewed were taken by Marines documenting the battle scene
and taking pictures of the faces of the dead to determine if any
were known or suspected insurgents. The photos were not taken to
document wounds of the victims, nor were they done for a possible
criminal investigation.
-
Acknowledged conflicts
between photographic "evidence" and Iraqi pathology reports
regarding cause of deaths.
[Source:
North County Times and a hearing observer for Defend Our Marines]
____________________________
Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Tom Brady
Examined houses one and two in Haditha as part of a process team that
arrived on March 26, 2006.
-
Said he pieced together
what may have happened in the first of four homes U.S. troops
cleared after a roadside bomb killed a Marine.
-
Testified that a trip
to the home four months after the attack did not yield any physical
evidence. The home had been repaired and repainted.
But saw damage
consistent with a fragmentation device.
-
Brady claimed it was
possible that a 4-year-old boy may have been deliberately executed
by a killer standing over him while the child cowered, based on the
location of the boy's wounds. But Tatum's attorney, Jack Zimmerman,
said photographs suggested it was much more likely that the boy had
been huddled at a woman's bosom when the Marines burst into the room
and sprayed it with gunfire after first tossing in a grenade.
-
Acknowledged that photos did not contain objects which made
identification of time and place impossible.
-
Impossible to determine how many shooters were in the houses, who
was shot, and who died of grenade wounds.
[Source:
North County Times]
____________________________
Day Five / Friday,
July 20
Cpl. Robert Stafford
Armory Custodian for
Kilo Co.
-
Testified that two AK 47s were retrieved from
house one and two.
-
Testified that he believed an
AK 47 was
retrieved from the white car. Prosecutors stopped him from saying
more because the white car is not part of the Tatum case.
[Source: unpublished
reports from a hearing observer]
____________________________
Day Six / July 23, Monday
Staff Sgt. Travis
Fields
Kilo Co. platoon sergeant
According to the
North County Times:
On the stand, Fields testified that the
rules about when Marines may open fire became less restrictive
during the time of the company's seven-month stay in Haditha.
Military brass told Marines in Haditha -- a hot bed of insurgency at
the time, according to testimony -- that they no longer had to fire
warning shots, but rather were allowed to shoot to kill in hostile
situations, Fields said.
____________________________
Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Nayda Mannle
Lead investigator.
According to the
North County Times:
Special Agent Nayda Mannle testified that
officials at NCIS headquarters in Washington D.C. rejected a request
by her and others -- including a military prosecutor -- that they be
allowed to tape their interviews with the accused Marines.
Mannle said her bosses denied the request because earlier
questioning had not been taped and "they did not want any
inconsistencies."
Mannle also said the families of the victims refused to allow
investigators to exhume the bodies for autopsies.
"To them, it would be too emotionally difficult to do that," Mannle
said. She also said family members feared "their lives would be in
danger" from insurgents if they helped the Americans in the
investigation.
____________________________
Day Seven / July 24, Tuesday
LCpl
Tatum’s Statement to the Investigating Officer
(As recalled by legal counsel)
Before
closing arguments in his Article 32 hearing, LCpl Tatum made a
statement to the hearing officer, LtCol Paul Ware.
The lance
corporal spoke. He did not read a statement, or speak from notes.
After so much obfuscation by prosecution witnesses, it was time for
some plain talk and that is what LCpl Tatum did.
The
following is a non-verbatim recollection (provided by attorney Jack B.
Zimmermann) ) of the lance corporal's statement, given on 24 July
2007. I emphasize this is from memory, not a recording. A transcript
of the hearing will not be available to legal counsel until late in
August.
There are some
points I’d like to bring to light.
The reason I
fired in house 1 is that I knew small arms fire was coming from the
south. I didn’t see where it was coming from, but I saw an M203 round
hit house 1. My squad leader told me on the way to house 1 to treat it
as hostile.
I heard a
Marine engage a target after entering the house, and I knew Mendoza
engaged a target to the right inside the house. I
heard an AK-47 being racked in the room to the left, and me and Cpl
Salinas threw grenades in that room.
After the
grenade went off, I went in and followed my training firing in my
sector.
The visibility
was horrible. There was dust and smoke. I really couldn’t make out
more than targets. Someone yelled there was a runner, so I followed
my fire team to house 2.
Before we
entered, Mendoza engaged someone through the door. Inside, I was told
to frag a room. When I saw that room was clear, I heard another
Marine engage in the next room. My duty was to help that Marine, so I
went in and engaged targets.
It was dark, I
couldn’t make out a whole lot. Just targets. I only went in each room
a few steps, and the shooting lasted only seconds in both houses.
I did not tell
NCIS I knew there were women and children before I fired. I did not
know there was women and children in that house until I went back
later in the afternoon with SSgt Laughner. Otherwise, I would have
physically stopped everybody from shooting. The conversation Mendoza
said happened never happened.
I am not
comfortable with the fact that I might have shot a child. I don’t
know if my rounds impacted anybody. That is a burden I will have to
bear.
|