MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
The Army has filed 22 new counts against suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, among them a capital offense for which the government said it would not seek the death penalty.
The charges, filed Tuesday but disclosed only Wednesday, are one charge of aiding the enemy, five counts of theft of public property or records, two counts of computer fraud, eight counts of transmitting defense information in violation of the Espionage Act, and a count of wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the internet knowing it would be accessible to the enemy. The aiding the enemy charge is a capital offense which potentially carries the death penalty. Five additional charges are for violating Army computer security regulations.
Comments
As if the original counts weren't enough.
Now that Manning can be put away for a millennium or so, perhaps a few government lawyers could be spared to look into who in the billionaires boys club on Wall Street could be held responsible for crashing our economy, which involved bigger crimes with worse consequences for this country than a enlisted kid exposing poorly secured diplomatic papers.
by NCD on Wed, 03/02/2011 - 8:48pm
Here is a basic summary of how the court martial system works according to the book:
http://www.armytimes.com/community/ask_lawyer/military_askthelawyer_0113...
And here is a much more helpful page I ran across when researching the Manning story in the past. It's a listing of cases represented by a "Hard Hitting Aggressive" (they say) military justice defense lawyer firm, giving a short entry on each case on what the charges were and what they did for their clients and sometimes a little on how they did it:
http://www.ucmjdefense.com/military-defense-lawyer-recentcases.htm
The latter definitely gives one a much better idea of what really goes on in the military justice system.
by artappraiser on Wed, 03/02/2011 - 9:11pm
"The latter definitely gives one a much better idea of what really goes on in the military justice system.""
AA, Always glad when you weigh in. I do not see your comment I quoted as being supported in the second link you provided. I do not see anything there which tells me what "really goes on" in the military justice system as a whole and absolutely nothing that would inform me as to what to expect regarding Manning's prospects before the military court.
What I see is an advertisement for a legal firm specializing in military justice which reports many successes. What their win/loss percentage is not revealed. Almost all of the cases involve sex crimes. a category that I believe the military would like to see resolved as quietly as possible. Bradley Manning' case is of a very different category.
by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 03/02/2011 - 10:58pm
Sorry you didn't find it a useful inside look as I did. Despite the fact that of course the guy is is only going to talk about his successess and not his failures, it definitely gave me an overview that a lot of shit goes on outside the courtroom, equal to if not more than in the civilian system, that there is a ton of plea bargaining and all kinds of deals going on between prosecutors and defense lawyers. and it is not as straightforward or strict as it is often depicted. Plus it seems not that unusual for the juries to acquit even when all kinds of military bigwigs are testifying against the defendant.
Also they are not all sex cases, though those are the most common; here's a couple quick picks from the first page that are not:
by artappraiser on Thu, 03/03/2011 - 1:02am
Interesting. Poulsen has dropped from the Wired byline on all this stuff ever since Greenwald called him out on his FBI/Lamo involvement in the Manning arrest (looks like Wired even went back and pulled his name from some stuff originally published under both he and Zetter).
They are obviously reaching on some of it - trying to punk him into a plea and cooperation. The Espionage Act stuff might be a stretch in civilian court in light of the Rosen standard unless they come up with something that undermines the state of mind Manning professed in those chat logs. They are going to have a hell of a time proving he *intended* it to cause harm to US interests, *intended* to transmit it to a foreign power (another interesting question is exactly which "foreign power" was it Manning's intent to help? Surely they aren't going to call Wikileaks a "power" which clearly indicates a state actor). If he did as he said and encrypted everything - it seems unreasonable to assert he didn't take active precautions to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy (again, unless it gets established by absurd precedent, we can't assert Wikileaks an "enemy power").
Can't wait to see (a) the evidence and (b) the charges analyzed by someone credible. I'll bet slapping a capital charge on him just complicated their Assange extradition endgame a bit.
Good highlight.
by kgb999 on Thu, 03/03/2011 - 1:46am
I had not thought of the connection between the capital charge and the extradition of Assange.Good catch.
Greenwald comments today at Salon with some good legal analysis.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
by A Guy Called LULU on Thu, 03/03/2011 - 11:42am