A military court of appeals overturned the conviction Wednesday of a former Marine Corps scout sniper who, along with other Marine snipers, urinated on Taliban corpses and posted the video to YouTube.
The decision from the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals came five years after the Marine scout sniper, Staff Sgt. Joseph Chamblin, was originally convicted. The court found the then-commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Jim Amos, attempted to force strict punishments for the Marines who were involved, thus tainting the case, according to Military.com.
Chamblin initially was sentenced to 30 days confinement, a dock in pay, and a demotion to sergeant in December 2012 after pleading guilty.
“The highest-ranking officer in the Marine Corps told [Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser] that the appellant and his co-accused should be ‘crushed,’” the court said. “This is an unusually flagrant example of [unlawful command influence]. We find that UCI this direct, and occurring at this level, is highly corrosive to public trust in this proceeding.”
Waldhauser, who Amos initially tapped to serve as the cases’ oversight authority, said in a 2012 affidavit that Amos told him the Marines involved in the video should be “crushed” and discharged.
Amos also allegedly told Waldhauser, now the commander for U.S. Africa Command, to give all the Marine snipers general courts-martial, which Waldhauser said he wouldn’t do.
Amos eventually replaced Waldhauser with then-Lt. Gen. Richard Mills.
A lawyer for Amos also attempted in February 2012 to make the photos and videos of the Marine snipers be classified as secret, and in the spring of that year, concerns were raised about a presentation Amos delivered that asked the question, “What Does America Think of Her Marines Today?” with an accompanying photo of the incident with the Marine snipers.
“A member of the public, aware of these facts and this assessment from the [oversight authority’s staff judge advocate] would lose confidence in the fair processing of this case,” the court said.
