Saturday, May 02, 2009

Charlie Gittins vows to use DOJ memos to challenge Abu Ghraib court-martial conviction

Friday's WaPo included this interesting article in which Charlie Gittins, counsel for Charles Graner, indicated his intent to use the recently released DOJ memoranda on harsh interrogation techniques to "convince the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces that top officials improperly influenced [Graner's court-martial] and kept evidence from the defense."

Graner's supp is due at CAAF on Monday. See United States v. Graner, __ M.J. ___, No. 09-0432/AR (C.A.A.F. March 25, 2009) (order).

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

CAAF will be all over this one. A guaranteed grant. CAAF loves any and all cases playing in the media circus. Put Abu Ghraib, Al Qaeda, torture, or Aviano in your subject line, and it is grant-city.

Anonymous said...

When it comes to crafting grant-worthy issues, Gittens is the maestro.

Anonymous said...

Still...Graner is a psychopath. Sure the wild west mentality of Iraq back then afforded him the opportunity to do these things, but he was doing it because he got his rocks off doing it.

Anonymous said...

His lawyer should have taken a plea deal.

Anonymous said...

This could get interesting. Given the current admin's willingness to release documents that harm mid-ranking officers and officals, the meme could change big here.

These guys were convicted on a story of "the girl general didn't lead and they started being mean on their own."

A decent civvie DC, given free reign to call witnesses and present evidence, could change that to "the girl general wasn't leading, and these low ranking enlisted followed the orders of intel officers and the directives of CIA officers. How were they to know that military and civvie officers of the United States government were ordering them to commit crimes?"

Anonymous said...

having been in AG shortly after this incident, that will be tough to do. I am sure that the headlines would love it, but I don't think it accurately reflects the facts and circumstances.

The "good order and discipline" was severely lacking, there was no process for tracking the detainees or interrogating them, SEALs and Brit SpecOps would come in under the cloak of darkness, pick folks up, drop folks off, interrogate, and be gone by sunrise.

Plus, Graner, from what I understand, was sending emails home to his son bragging about all of the cool "shit" he was able to do (and attached the JPEGs to prove it).