Green broke into a slight smile when the verdict was announced (RIP Abeer)

[uppityperson]

I fucking bet he did. Thinking of what he did, murdering a child, that child's parents, then raping another child before shooting her in the head and burning her.

Smile for life in prison? How fucking nice. Oh, MrGreen, go to hell. I sincerely hope your life in prison is horrible.

RIP Abeer, Hadeel, Fahkriya and Qassim


http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090521/NEWS01/90521036/Ex-solder+to+be+sentenced+to+life

A federal jury today was unable to decide whether former Pvt. Steven Dale Green should live or die for killing an Iraqi family in March 2006, meaning that by law he will receive the lesser sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The verdict of nine women and three men came after a four-week trial and nearly 11 hours of deliberations. Chief Judge Thomas Russell will sentence Green on Sept. 4.

Green broke into a slight smile when the verdict was announced.

(clip)

Green, 24, originally of Midland, Texas, was convicted of 12 counts of capital murder in the deaths of Abeer Al-Janabi, 14, her 6-year-old sister, Hadeel, and their parents, Kassem and Fakhriya.

His lawyers had argued that it was unjust for a former soldier to be judged by civilian jurors who had never experienced the horrors of war. Legal experts said Green was the first former soldier to face the death penalty in a trial in a civilian court for a war-time offense. He was tried in federal court because he was discharged from the Army, for a personality disorder, before his role in crimes was discovered. Green was tried in Paducah because he was deployed from Fort Campbell, on the Kentucky-Tennessee line, with the 101st Airborne Division.

In emotional closing arguments yesterday, Justice Department attorney Brian Skaret asked the jury to take Green’s life for the murders, which occurred in March 2006 in the family’s home 20 miles south of Baghdad. One of Green’s lawyers, Scott Wendelsdorf, pleaded, “For God’s sake, spare him.” Wendelsforf said the Army failed to properly treat Green for stress after it said he suffered an emotional breakdown while serving in the most dangerous area of Iraq in a platoon that suffered that most casualties of any in the war. Skaret called Green’s crimes — which included raping Abeer and shooting her in the head — “unthinkable and outrageous” and asked a jury to “finish what he started” by putting him to death.
(clip)

The jury had to wade through 250 pages of jury instructions that included 10 aggravating factors supporting the death penalty and 39 mitigating factors. Three of Green’s co-conspirators — Specs. Paul Cortez and James Parker and Pvt. Jesse Spielman — already had been court-martialed and sentenced to long prison terms, although they are eligible for parole in 10 years after starting their sentences.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Good - no parole ........

I couldn't find that detail in other news reports.

People don't like the death penalty. They may say they do when asked in a poll, but when they're on a jury and they suddenly find themselves in the role of deciding to take the life of someone, they back away. Which is good.

Good. He's gone now....................

[uppityperson]

3. No parole is good. "wading through 250 pages of jury instructions"

Sounds like they were limited to what their instructions were, but they could not get a unanimous agreement.

[Warpy]

7. I would rather have this sociopath locked up

away from the rest of us with little to do but think through what got him there for the rest of his life.

Death is final and ends pain. Life in prison is much, much worse.

[JuniperLea]

10. Hear, hear!

I hope it's much, much worse for this rat bastard than for the average. He deserves just as much mercy as he has shown.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

12. He'll go to a Supermax prison ........

Twenty-three hours a day of solitary. One hour of exercise in the prison yard a day. Showers twice a week, I think. Maybe three times. Meals on a tray through a slot in your solid metal door. Not even bars or glass doors. Supermax prisons are horrible places.

For the rest of his fucking ugly life.

I hope he lives a long, long time .................

[uppityperson]

18. I think of myself as a caring humane person. But.

I hope he lives a long long time.

And I wish they would go after his recruiter and everyone else who knew anything about this case, or about MrGreen's psychosis and didn't do what they needed to do to keep everyone safe. And those who starting this BS occupation. And those who continue it to profit off it.

They all need to be in hell.

[H2O Man]

28. Possibly.

Usually, people are sent to a "supermax" for behaviors exhibited in other facilities. I think it is unlikely that this fellow will attempt to be a "tough guy" in a general population. His crime is evidence of his being a cowardly dog.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

29. I know, but

this is such a hot potato and it is of such an horrendous nature, he could conceivably go straight there.

If he goes to a maximum security prison, he's gonna be in for a terrible time among the GP. Those guys, as strange as it might seem, are quite moral in their own, twisted ways, and, what I found so surprising, are remarkably patriotic.

He's dead ....................

[uppityperson]

31. and yet, that "slight smile".

If I were in that part of the country, I would have gone to the trial. I think. I hope this does not just stop with Green and his buddies. I wish it would go higher also.

That "slight smile" makes me think he does not understand what the verdict means

[Tangerine LaBamba]

34. All he heard when the jury came back

with the life imprisonment decision was that he wasn't going to be killed by the government.

That, I suspect, is what the "slight smile" was about. To him, that's beating the system.

I once had a client who had just been convicted of a felony, one that was going to bring him some hard time, and when I turned to him after the verdict was read, he looked at me and asked if he was going to get lunch before they took him away.

Their brains don't work like ours......................

[uppityperson]

36. That is what I was hoping also

He heard he wasn't going to die, but didn't understand what life in prison without parole really means. I truly hope he wasn't smiling because he got away with something awful like this.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

38. Sorry, but

he was. In his twisted mind, ducking execution means he got away with it. Life in prison with no possibility of parole doesn't compute for him.

His brain doesn't work like ours ......

[H2O Man]

33. He is most likely

to be kept in a segregated wing in a "regular" prison, for his own safety. Many US prisons have relatively large Muslim populations. A person sent to serve a life sentence for the type of crime he committed would clearly be a target, and at high risk.

Supermax prisons are not used for protecting weasals. They already tend to be full of the type of inmate who poses a serious risk to the safety of other inmates and prison staff.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

35. How demonic

does a warden need to be to let this monster loose into the GP?

Or how about a CO who forgets to lock him in?

Some people who are in Supermax facilities are political prisoners. That's not a known fact, since it's part of America's shame, but there are some. Those places hold some people we'll never hear from again.

[H2O Man]

37. True.

It's used to house Native American political prisoners. This is an outgrowth of the 1950's report by a Princeton professor, who advocated the placing of political and influential prisoners into the prison psych wards, to silence them.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

39. Bingo ......

And no one will ever know. I batted my head against that brick wall when I worked with the New Catholic Left in the 1970s, with the Berrigan brothers. We got nowhere. Nothing. No one cared.

Our nation's shame ..............

[uppityperson]

41. Leonard Peltier?

[mitchum]

44. Maybe you can answer something that I have always wondered about...

I am also aware that so many convicts are patriotic. Do you think that is due to the...uh...less than high intelligence found in so much of the criminal population? Considering that the jingoism that leads to "patriotism" is designed to appeal to the less than intelligent?

[glitch]

43. Agreed. Much much worse, one reason to be against the death penalty.

The other is you might make a mistake and execute an innocent (not in this case of course) which is murder.

No good reason for the death penalty, IMO. It coddles the guilty and murders the innocent. Bad/bad.

[blaze]

2. It's a lose/lose situation of the most extreme

This report makes my heart hurt.

[floridablue]

4. I doubt any of them will live a long life.

[TahitiNut]

5. Just another psychopath from Midland, Texas.

It must be the water.

[Mike 03]

6. This case is a catastrophe all around.

The only thing I feel now is that I'm glad this case was ajudicated as a war crime, but there is nothing that can undo it.

It was just a hideous crime, and maybe the FBI BS unit can study Green.

That would be one positive outcome of this trial.

[uppityperson]

9. I want to see his recruiter held liable. And the psych person who kept him in. And the person who di

discharged him blithely, back to the civilian world, KNOWING what he did.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/21/steven-green-spared-death_n_206538.html
(clip)
Federal prosecutor Brian Skaret told jurors during closing arguments that former Pfc. Steven Dale Green intentionally raped and killed 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi after shooting her father, mother and sister.

"He crushed that family," Skaret said of the March 2006 attack in Mahmoudiya, Iraq, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. "And, in doing so, he signed his own name to this death sentence."
(clip)
In his closing argument, Skaret walked jurors through a series of photos from the shooting scene, including an image of 6-year-old Hadeel al-Janabi, which showed her hair band had been blown off.
(clip)
During the sentencing phase of the trial, jurors heard from multiple witnesses that Green had little structure in his home life and little guidance from his parents. Skaret said everyone has family issues, but those issues do not lead the majority of people to attack and kill an innocent family. Despite having a rough home life, Green chose to take part in the attack on the al-Janabi family, and his upbringing shouldn't be a factor in the jury decision, Skaret said....

[Mike 03]

13. You make excellent points to say the least.

This is just one of those cases that is so horrific I find it hard to speak about.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

22. I did that once, sort of, a long time ago ........

My client was an Army enlisted man who had deserted. Son of a friend. Guy was a beauty - a Nazi, psychopath, and he'd joined the Army "for the discipline." Did I mention anti-Semite?

Anyway, he was in Guyana, working as - yes, of course - a snake trader. He wanted to come home, but he was afraid the MPs would shoot him if he tried. I went down and got him, brought him back with a special passport (this was a long time ago - mid-seventies), and hid him out in an empty house that a realtor friend of took off the Multiple Listings for a while.

I had to turn him in, but if I took him to an Army base, he'd be slapped right into the brig. Then I figured out where I could deposit this head case while I prepared for his inevitable court martial. A very safe and legitimate Army base.

Walter Reed Medical Center. Yes, it's legally an Army base.



I turned him in to a shrink - a major - on the Psychiatric floor. From then on, I just set out to compile his psychiatric history - it was extensive. He really was nuts.

Ultimately, when I was conferring with the JAG officer who was going to be prosecuting this court martial, I showed him my case, which said that all the psychological testing the Army did of its enlistees couldn't screen out someone THIS crazy?

Can you say "military malpractice?" I asked him, a phrase I'd coined and really loved.

Can you say "Washington Post investigative reporter?" I asked him (this was just after Watergate.)

My client got an honorable discharge, moved to Florida, opened a tile business, and married a Jewish girl.

I got a big check and his mother's eternal thanks.

I cashed the check and never heard anything else ...................

[mitchum]

26. Thanks for your post...

that was a fascinating story

[uppityperson]

30. sergeant Green confessed to the next day covered it all up. Finally was discharged less-than-honorab

not enough in my opinion.

Thank you for turning him in, good call on where to do it. And "military malpractice" is a good phrase. When Abeer's story first broke, and Green was arrested, I was really pissed at whomever discharged him back to USA civilian population. What if he'd done something else back home? What would the liability have been.

Then to find out his sergeant knew, the next day, who had raped/murdered, and simply covered it up... Makes me wonder how much more of this crap has happened.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

32. Oh, consider that this is just the one that got caught ......

Considering how heavily medicated the troops are, how strung out they are, considering the violent crimes and suicides we've seen among returning Iraq vets, my guess is that the atrocities that have been committed over there would make My Lai look like a garden party.

Since our news outlets agreed to be planted with the troops, their every movement controlled and censored, we don't even have good journalists who might sniff out the stories and report them.....................................

[Psychic Consortium]

8. RIP Abeer, et al.

A child rapist does not fare very well in prison.
He may wish he had rec'd the death penalty.

[uppityperson]

11. Here are ID cards of Abeer and her parents. Can't find one for Hadeel

[Mike 03]

14. Not that it matters, but in years of following this trial, no picture of her as a teenager

has been produced.

I just am curious why this is.

[uppityperson]

17. And no picture of her little sister. I think there just weren't pictures because

they were just a family living as best they could and they didn't have photos. I am glad, though, to not see the ones they do have of Abeer and Hadeel.

[Xithras]

20. Simple enough.

The majority of people living on Earth today will die without ever having a photo taken of them. The ubiquitous camera thing is a phenomena of certain western societies and a few asian ones, but most of the people on this planet don't have easy access to one. Across vast sections of this planet, getting your picture taken is still something you dress up for.

Besides, there's another issue here. She was 14 when she died in 2006. We invaded Iraq in 2003, when she was 11. The last three years of her life were spent in a war zone, where taking yearly photographs of the kids was the last thing the parents were concerned with. Prior to the invasion Iraq was under a sanction that prevented the importation of non-medical supplies. She probably never saw a digital camera in her life, and film was an expensive item that wasn't wasted on taking pictures of kids.

[uppityperson]

21. thank you for explaining better than I did. I am just not focusing

well right now, this is upsetting. Not the fact that Green got life in prison, but the whole thing is fucked up. So, thank you.

[Psychic Consortium]

16. The Abeer pic is beautiful..... had not seen the parents before....

thank you.....

PC believes in karma.
There will be some for Mr. Green.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

23. I cannot look ......

I cannot put faces to these victims.

Some things are just too much..................

[Psychic Consortium]

24. Yes it is so hard to look at the Abeer pic. Heart breaking, she looks like a little angel.

I understand fully why you can't go there.

[Mike 03]

15. Kick and rec this thread, because this case is so symbolic of how wrong this war was.

Thank you for keeping us informed about the state of this case, which is entering into it's final, impoprtant status.

[ck4829]

19. And yet we're worried about Gitmo detainees on American soil, why?

We've already got a monster on our soil!

[Tangerine LaBamba]

25. I'm not worried........

Are you worried?

Naw, you're not.

The lunatic liars are worried, but they're not, not really, because they're liars, and they don't want any of them there "terraists" to end up here, within a reasonable jurisdiction, in the kind of setting where they might get legal counsel and be afforded hearings and then - oh, man, this is getting DEEP! - what if everyone finds out what the lunatic liars already know, which is that those detainees, the vast majority of them, maybe ALL of them, are simply citizens who got grabbed.

I just made myself dizzy...................

[Psychic Consortium]

27. Yes. Many of those tortured by Cheney et al were innocent.

Just grabbed off the street as you say.

The truth will come out.

[SOS]

40. This going to go over very badly in Iraq

:(

[uppityperson]

42. The remaining al Janabi relatives wanted him sent there so they could

kill him. I also do not think this penalty will go well with them.

[Lochloosa]

45. 24 years old. I hope he lives to be 84.

walking his 6x8 every fucking day of his life.

[Lucky Luciano]

46. I kind of agree that the death penalty is wrong for this (and I am nto totally against the death pen

Green's lawyers make a point: "His lawyers had argued that it was unjust for a former soldier to be judged by civilian jurors who had never experienced the horrors of war."


The intense stress that these guys are under is something no civilian, myself included, has any comprehension of. This stress can make people batshit crazy and insane as it did for Green - and as it has done for other soldiers there and former soldiers here suffering from PTSD.

[DIKB]

47. A child rapist and child murderer in prison?

I hope he gets the same fate as other child rapists and murderers.