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The court martial of Navy SEAL Matthew McCabe ended today, with a jury of seven finding McCabe not guilty on all charges.
A Virginia military jury found a Navy SEAL not guilty Thursday on all charges he punched an Iraqi suspected in the 2004 killings of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah.
“I’m really happy right now,” Matthew McCabe, the Navy SEAL, told Fox News shortly after hearing the outcome of the court martial. “It’s an amazing feeling. I’m on cloud nine right now.”
McCabe, a special operations petty officer second class, called the proceedings “troubling at times,” adding “having your career on the line is not an easy thing to handle.
McCabe was the third and final Navy SEAL to be prosecuted in the case. He had faced charges of assault, making a false official statement and dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee. McCabe was accused of punching last year is Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected mastermind of the grisly killings six years ago.
After the court martial, the 24-year-old from Perrysburg, Ohio, thanked the public for its continued support.
“It’s been great everything they’ve done,” he told Fox News. “But, don’t worry about it anymore. We are putting this all behind us. It’s done and over with. I’m going to try not to think about this ever again.”
… The defense called an oral surgeon Thursday who testified by phone from Baghdad. He said Abed might have bitten an ulcer on his lip, causing it to bleed. Defense attorneys hope this validates their position that no assault occurred and that Al Qaeda detainees are trained to injure themselves then claim abuse.
This makes it SEALS 3, Department of Defense, 0. Considering the flimsy evidence the prosecution had, it seems like charges should never have even been brought against these three heroes. Abed was one of our most wanted terrorists, and the alleged mastermind of the brutal and horrifying Blackwater murders in Iraq. As I’ve said before, I can’t figure out if Abed’s claims of abuse were actually investigated or if they just took them at face value. It sure as heck seems like there wasn’t any investigation whatsoever before charges were brought.
Thank God justice was served and these three heroes can go on without fear of their careers being ruined. We’re lucky to have such men willing to fight for our country, even when their heroics were rewarded so poorly.
Cross-posted at The Green Room and Stop the ACLU.
Chris M-G says: I was wondering when you’d pick up on this- fantastic news. Quite a kangaroo trial, eh?
Is it too much to hope for that the nimrods who brought these charges against our valiant fighting men will learn from their failure?
I’m so happy to be wrong.
Now we need to get the DoD purged. Hate to say it, but we need another Joe McCarthy. Nidal Hasan shoots up his own base and we aren’t supposed to jump to conclusions about anything…and then we have this spectacle?? If that’s not a fifth-column, I don’t know what is.
Haliburton says: OK, let’s be frank. The Naval high command thought it was alright to have a few brave sailors put on masks and flippers and disarm pacific beaches in WW II. And after a while, the called them Seals but, of course, they really were not “Sailors” in the view of the Naval high command. Over the years, the program languished, but was revised in the modern era. The Naval high command had some small use for the Seals, but never accorded them any respect or special consideration.
By way of illustration, it is interesting to note that the heroic Navy Seal combat veteran, Mr. Demartino, which the Navy attempted to court martial and was found not guilty, is only an E-4, which is equivalent to an Army corporal. Even Army Green Berets who are without combat experience, are at least E-5 Sergeants! But not Mr. Demartino or his Seal compatriots, who are not, in the view of the Navy, really “Sailors”.
It would seem that, if the Navy is not serious about naval special forces, it would be best to end the Seal program. The Naval high command clearly does not support the Seals, and recently failed in their attempt to have three of them Court Marshaled on absurd charges. This is all very sad, like a Navy desperately attempting to avoid the development of air craft carriers in the 1920’s.
The most immediate villain in the preposterous court marshal case is the Naval commander at Central Command. However, he is simply representative of the senior Naval command in Washington, who are only interested in ships and planes and beautiful white uniforms with gold braid. Admirals Nimitz, Halsey, and yes, Donitz and Yamamoto, would not be impressed!
I have not been following these cases closely because I’ve been involved in a house purchase and other distractions, but I’ve read a lot recently and I think there are several things that demand comment.
I used to be a Legal Specialist in the JAG Corps working for Army prosecutors. Rule #1 for prosecutors is, “You don’t take a losing case to court.” Prosecutors are already overburdened with case load. Courts-Martial are very time consuming, and there are alternatives to trial which are still pretty stiff punishments to be meted out.
If you don’t have the evidence for a conviction, then a prosecutor will either drop the charges or convince the commander to never prefer charges. The commander can then attempt nonjudicial punishment (an “Article 15” in the Army or “Captain’s Mast” in the Navy), but the burden of proof and elements of the offense are the SAME for NJP as they are for court-martial. If there’s not enough evidence for a court-martial, the prosecutor will likely object to the NJP in his legal review and the reviewing authority will likely set it aside.
If the accused rejects the NJP, then the prosecutor either has to take the case to trial or drop the charges. No evidence, no trial.
If the prosecutor has evidence of guilt but it’s questionable whether he can secure a conviction, then he will offer the accused nonjudicial punishment with a Discharge in Lieu of Court-Martial. This discharge carries an Other than Honorable (OTH) characterization of service which deprives the veteran of practically all veterans benefits. It’s the most severe punishment a soldier can receive without a conviction by court-martial (which counts as a federal conviction for the rest of your life).
If the case is really weak but the accused doesn’t want to risk federal conviction, he will accept NJP and then the commander can discharge him for Misconduct, most likely with a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions; it takes a board to issue an OTH under these circumstances.
So either this prosecutor:
1. Thought he had stronger evidence than he actually had
2. Was stupid or incompetent
3. Was in a pissing contest with three sailors who refused NJP and went to trial based only on ego
4. Received pressure (i.e. unlawful command influence) to take the case to trial
5. He PLANNED to lose the case
Number 5 is unlikely, but it’s the most interesting. By holding the trial and losing, it gives the appearance that the military took the allegations seriously but the acquittal restores their good name and protects the accused from double-jeopardy.
Even though they’ve been acquitted, the commander could STILL impose nonjudicial punishment for the SAME or OTHER alleged crimes, but that scenario is HIGHLY unlikely. NJP for the same crime is NOT double-jeopardy (because NJP is nonjudicial) but it LOOKS like double-jeopardy, so it’s rarely done. Prosecutors are required to take ALL KNOWN OFFENSES to court, so if there were other prosecutable crimes committed, the omission at court-martial would likely preclude charging under NJP as well.
I’m relieved that the sailors were acquitted. It’s a blessing in disguise that, now that they are acquitted, they likely cannot be charged for anything else related to the incident.
I am disturbed, however, that the Navy would either charge people based on flimsy evidence or stage a show-trial. It’s easy to say, after-the-acquittal, that it should never have gone to trial, but I’d really like to know this prosecutor’s reasoning.
The prosecutor is supposed to make a decision independently, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have input. The Convening Authority can express a strong preference to take a case to trial or the the Staff Judge Advocate of the Major Command can advise the prosecutor that taking the case to trial serves the interests of justice. No one can FORCE the prosecutor to take it to trial even though unlawful influence often comes into play in subtle ways.
Many military prosecutors have a 1000 batting average precisely because they don’t take losers to court. A losing case definitely makes one wonder what was going on behind the scenes. THREE losing cases should make you suspicious of some conspiracy although since it was the SAME incident, it’s likely any “legal mistakes” were correlated.
“… charges he punched an Iraqi suspected in the 2004 killings of four U.S. contractors …”
Good grief – what have we come to? We field an army and put them in chains. We forbid them to shoot at the enemy. The old Russian Army (and Navy) used to have a Political Officer in each company or ship, to make sure everybody (including the Commander and the Captain) held to the Party line. In our military, we don’t have to send civil rights lawyers along with the troops, we just make the troops “phone home” to get clearance for every shot.
Those cases should never have come to trial. The prosecuting officers deserve to be stationed in Iceland for the rest of their careers.
Thanks, POWinCA for your comment. I hadn’t thought of #5 – but even if that’s the case, they still never should have come to trial.
Halliburton: “… the Naval commander at Central Command…”
Navy brass (or gold) sometimes attracts less-than-virtuous people. I just read the account of the disaster on the USS Forrestal in the ’60s. There was a horrific accident, and the carrier was almost lost. The Captain and crew performed heroically, saving the ship. (A young Naval officer, John McCain was almost killed.) After many investigations, the Captain and crew were cleared, but a New Commander, Elmo Zumwalt, (later CNO), disapproved the Captain’s next command assignment and sent him to Iceland.
During WW II, Commander Joe Rochefort was in charge of the code-breaking unit in the Pacific (he appears in disguise in Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”). There’s a pretty good case that his unit helped turn the tide in the war in the Pacific. He was recommended for the Distinguished Service Medal by Admiral Nimitz, but Rear Admiral Joseph Redman and his brother John made sure that the award didn’t happen. (Rochefort was a bit eccentric, and there seems to have been a sort of turf battle.) The medal was finally awarded ten years after he died.
There’s a good line in one of Gibson’s movies – where he’s a Roman general facing the Germans: “Unleash the dogs of war”. War is not pretty, war is a last resort – and we should realize that it is a last resort, and conduct it accordingly. At least one modern General said that if you’re going to go to war, go to win it.
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