FELICITAMOS a su familia por haberle apoyado.
February 21, 2009
After Guilty Plea Offer, G.I. Cleared of Iraq Deaths
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
On Dec. 4, Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez was found not guilty of killing two New York Army National Guard officers in Iraq — a rare case of soldier-on-soldier violence in the war and a crime for which prosecutors had sought the death penalty.
The verdict demoralized Army prosecutors. The widows of the two officers appeared devastated, convinced that a guilty man had gone unpunished. And last month, Sergeant Martinez was honorably discharged and returned to civilian life, having publicly proclaimed his innocence and sense of vindication.
However, documents obtained by The New York Times show that more than two years before the trial, while prosecutors were still gathering evidence against him, Sergeant Martinez signed an offer to plead guilty to the murder charges. He offered to be sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, and thereby avoid the death penalty.
"This offer to plea originated with me," Sergeant Martinez said in the plea offer. "No person has made any attempt to force or coerce me into making this offer."
The offer was swiftly rejected by the general responsible for prosecuting the case.
There has been a rich debate in civilian legal circles about whether charging a person with a crime punishable by death compels some defendants to confess to crimes they might not have committed.
In the Martinez case, the guilty plea offer was also signed by the sergeant's two Army defense lawyers, Maj. Marc Cipriano and Capt. E. John Gregory, who were permitted by Army regulations to sign the plea offer only if they believed at the time that their client committed the crime. The two lawyers later successfully defended Sergeant Martinez at trial.
"They had a conviction handed to them and chose not to take it," Barbara Allen — the widow of one of the slain officers, First Lt. Lou Allen, and now a single mother of four young boys — said of the Army.
Sergeant Martinez, whose whereabouts are unknown, did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment. His lawyers did not respond to calls and e-mail messages seeking comment on the plea offer.
Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the commander of the Army's 18th Airborne Corps who signed a document rejecting the plea, retired in February 2007 and could not be reached; messages left with his relatives were not returned. Lawyers for the 18th Airborne Corps, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., whose office advised the general on the Martinez case, also did not respond to e-mail and phone messages.
An Army spokeswoman at Fort Bragg said on Friday that no one with knowledge of the plea offer was available to discuss it.
Maj. John C. Benson, a prosecutor of the Martinez case who was not involved in the decision to reject the plea offer, said there was concern within the Army that Sergeant Martinez might have been eligible for parole after 10 years, despite acknowledging murdering two officers.
"The horrible nature of the crime created a lot of conflict about whether to take the plea," he said in an interview. But given the outcome at trial, Major Benson said, "I wish that the guilty plea had been accepted," adding later, "I don't think there can be any doubt whatsoever as to his guilt."
Sergeant Martinez's murder trial was one of only two publicly known cases of enlisted soldiers charged with intentionally killing superiors during the Iraq war. In 2005, Sgt. Hasan K. Akbar of the 101st Airborne Division, was convicted at trial and sentenced to death in a grenade and rifle attack that killed two officers in Kuwait in 2003. General Vines affirmed that sentence in 2006.
In Sergeant Martinez's trial, prosecutors argued that he detonated a mine on an American base in the Iraqi city of Tikrit, killing his company commander, Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, and Lieutenant Allen in June 2005. Several soldiers from the 42nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Drum, N.Y., testified that Sergeant Martinez hated Captain Esposito and made several threatening statements about him.
Sergeant Martinez's plea offer, dated April 3, 2006, came after he and his lawyer learned that a soldier had admitted that weeks before the deaths, she had given him Claymore mines that her unit, about to return home, no longer needed. The soldier, Staff Sgt. Amy Harlan of the Army Reserve's 350th Psychological Operations Company, later testified at Sergeant Martinez's court-martial.
The plea offer document stipulated that Sergeant Martinez would tell a military judge "the essential facts and circumstances of the offenses to which I am pleading guilty." It also stated that the offer, while originating with Sergeant Martinez, could be rescinded by him at any time.
If the plea offer had been accepted, Sergeant Martinez would have had to describe his criminal conduct in enough detail to convince a judge. Military judges can and sometimes do reject guilty pleas they find unpersuasive.
"Martinez told his lawyer enough that his lawyer believed he could ethically put him up there to answer the judge's searching questions," said Walt Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general, now the dean of Texas Tech University School of Law. "Otherwise," he said of the lawyer, "he would be engaging in unethical conduct."
Gary D. Solis, a former Marine judge who teaches the law of war at Georgetown University Law Center, said General Vines' rejection of the plea offer, dated April 4, 2006, was unusual.
"The only reason you should turn this down is if you have an absolutely bulletproof case," he said. "I can't imagine why they didn't take it. You've got life in prison in hand."
In the Army, a soldier serving a life sentence is eligible for parole after 10 years.
In December, the government's six-week trial concluded. Prosecutors argued that Sergeant Martinez had not only a motive to kill Captain Esposito but also had access to the rarely used mine that killed them.
Defense lawyers accused the Army of fixating on their client very early on, with only circumstantial evidence to support their arguments. They also attacked the credibility of Sergeant Harlan's testimony that she had given Claymore mines to Sergeant Martinez, pointing out that she initially had not mentioned to Army investigators that she had given him any mines. On Dec. 4, after two days of deliberations, the 14-member military jury at Fort Bragg proclaimed Sergeant Martinez not guilty. To convict at trial, a military jury requires a two-thirds majority.
Major Benson, the Army prosecutor in the case, said several factors could have swayed the jury in the sergeant's favor.
"A strong opposition to death penalty was a definite factor among some of the panel members," he said. "It's quite possible that they were not able to separate the conviction from the punishment."
