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Me#1You#10 Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004 Posts: 6503
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 1:58 pm Post subject: |
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Excellent write-up from "Defend Our Marines"... (emphasis mine)
Quote: | NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS!
Verdict in Nazario Trial
Defend Our Marines | Nathaniel R. Helms | Thursday, August 28, 2008
View from the courtroom: Day one | Day two | Day three | Day four
Riverside, California – Jose L. Nazario, Jr is a free man.
A jury of nine women and three men needed six hours to decide the landmark case that also sends a warning to federal prosecutors about second guessing warriors in combat.
Bedlam erupted in the US District Court when his jury of nine women and three men acquitted the former Marine infantry squad leader of manslaughter and related charges.
Lead defense attorney Kevin B. McDermott and his self-styled and unarguably dynamic Marine Dream Team that gutted the prosecution got a little animated after the verdict.
They erupted with high fives and grins when the disc jockey smooth bailiff announced that on Count Three Jose Luis Nazario, Jr. was not guilty of feloniously using his M-16 rifle.
<snip>
The soft spoken warrior clawed his way out of Spanish Harlem to be a decorated, stand up sergeant of Marine Corps light infantry who was honorably discharged after eight grueling years. He was fired from his job as a Riverside police officer when Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agents frog marched him through his own police headquarters.
That indignity was the beginning of a bruising year-long ordeal that left his house in hock to the government for bond money and his wife and kid in upstate New York while he sweated it out with his mother in murderously hot Riverside.
<snip>
The Marine Dream Team was truly a piece of work.. Among them there is enough rank to run a battalion including the company clerk, something former enlisted man Joe Preis never fails to bring up in banter.
He likes to call retired Marine Corps Colonel Doug Applegate “the O-6” in reference to Applegate’s exalted rank. Preis was an artillary forward observer who fought with the Ninth Marines, the unenviable “Walkin’ Dead” that slammed through Somalia on that abortive peacekeeping mission.
Applegate, who has an uncanny resemblance and manner to silky smooth Fred Astaire, calls Preis “Stillborn.”
Now Preis is a lawyer at the silk stocking Pepper Hamilton LLP law firm that ponied up a tremendous amount of money to keep Nazario from getting bulldozed into the ground.
Without the big bucks from Pepper Hamilton and some appreciated aid from dozens if not hundreds of private donors to provide him a vigorous defense Nazario faced a ten years of mandatory jail time.
Add to that another $200,000 or so in pro bono work by the Dream Team itself and the immensity of the damage done to Nazario as well as the reputation of the Marine Corps is immense.
Defend Our Marines - cont'd |
The toll this has already taken on Sgt. Nazario, his family and the Marine Corps itself cannot be overestimated and I sincerely hope that ALL will emerge from this stronger, more successful, more vital and more resolute than they were before the commencement of this debacle.
I will be anxious to see that Sgt. Nazario is, somehow, quickly and fully compensated for this ordeal he was forced to endure. |
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zinfella Rear Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 708 Location: Mesa, Az
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 7:25 pm Post subject: |
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The correct verdict has finally been reached. Now, he needs to be made whole again. _________________ No whiners! |
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carpro Admin
Joined: 10 May 2004 Posts: 1176 Location: Texas
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Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:52 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | I will be anxious to see that Sgt. Nazario is, somehow, quickly and fully compensated for this ordeal he was forced to endure. |
Don't hold your breath. _________________ "If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service." |
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