Not Guilty

Yet another Marine initially accused of horrific crimes in the Haditha "massacre" case has been found not guilty. The Thomas More Law Center, which defended Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani, announced that a Military Board of Inquiry found him innocent of misconduct related to the Haditha deaths.

However, as the Law Center's post explains, Chessani is still being forced to retire from the Marine Corps because of what the Board called "substandard performance." Had he been found guilty of the misconduct charge, he could have also faced a demotion. All criminal charges against Chessani were dismissed last year.

Not a single Marine out of the eight originally accused of murdering 24 civilians on November 19, 2005 in Iraq has been convicted of any charges. One Marine, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, still faces trial on reduced charges of manslaughter. Perhaps the 0% conviction rate will encourage the government to drop all charges against Wuterich, who has always insisted he followed tactical guidelines and did nothing wrong, even when confronted by a hostile CBS News reporter on national television.

Remember what a big deal the Haditha story was to the media when it broke? I have found exactly one story by a national media outlet about Chessani's not guilty verdict, and it is predictably spun against him by the Associated Press. The reporter, Eliot Spagat, does not mention that every Marine but Wuterich has been exonerated until the last two sentences of the eleven paragraph article.

While being told to retire must be devastating for Chessani, at least he was not convicted of a crime he did not commit or forced to accept a humiliating demotion in rank for telling his men to tell the truth. As noted on Friday, Chessani's wife is currently expecting the couple's seventh child. Hopefully that boy or girl will grow up to be a great Marine too.