England Pleads Guilty to Abusing Prisoners

Lynndie England pled guilty. She will possibly get 30 months instead of 11 to 16 years.

PFC England has changed her story so that she and Graner thought it all up themselves and were not ordered by anyone above them in the chain of command.

Of course, by pleading guilty and changing her story, she gets to be reunited with her kid before preschool versus being let out in time for the first prom.

Which story was true? The one with the completely blind superior officers or the one where she was ordered to abuse prisoners?

The no accountability administration.

There's solid evidence this went at LEAST as high as Sanchez and almost certainly went to the top.

She's lying so she won't do as much time as the others who have gone before her and told the truth. She's lucky she was put on trial after the others. She gets to learn that the military is looking for scapegoats, not the truth. Now that she knows the rules of the game, she can play it better.

FORT HOOD, Texas -- A military judge Wednesday threw out Pfc. Lynndie England's guilty plea to prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, saying that he was not convinced that she knew that her actions were wrong at the time.

Col. James Pohl entered a plea of not guilty for England to a charge of conspiring with Pvt. Charles Graner Jr. to maltreat detainees at the Baghdad-area prison.

The mistrial for England, a 22-year-old reservist who appeared in some of the most notorious photographs from the 2003 abuse scandal, means the case gets kicked back to the military equivalent of a grand-jury proceeding.

The action came after Graner, the reputed ringleader of the abuse, testified at England's sentencing hearing that pictures he took of England holding a naked prisoner on a leash at Abu Ghraib were meant to be used as a legitimate training aid for other guards.

When England pleaded guilty Monday, she told the judge she knew that the pictures were being taken purely for the amusement of the guards.

Pohl said the two statements could not be reconciled.

"You can't have a one-person conspiracy," the judge said before he declared a mistrial and dismissed the jury.

Under military law, the judge could formally accept her guilty plea only if he was convinced that she knew at the time that what she was doing was illegal.

By rejecting the plea to the conspiracy charge, Pohl canceled that plea agreement. The military grand jury proceeding, known as an Article 32, had been conditionally waived in this case as long as the plea agreement was in effect.

Graner was called a defense witness on the second day of England's sentencing hearing.

They aren't buying it.

They won't accept her guilty plea! Amazing. They are going to make her plead "innocent" so they can crucify her like the others. I guess they need more low-level scapegoats to compensate for the lack of upper level commanders taking responsibility.

I thought this meant they're making her plead innocent so they can nail more upper-level commanders...?

It's hard to tell right now. It could go either way, at this point, but the latter path would require some guts on the part of the judge. The official report has already cleared the upper level commanders. I'm not optimistic.

Can somebody explain the logic of this ruling? The judge does not believe that she actually thought at the time that what she was doing was wrong? So therefore she has to plead innocent even though she NOW believes she is guilty? And after practically everybody thinks she was following the lead of somebody already convicted and sentenced, does that make HER innocent for playing along with her lover? Or does it make her guilty by association, in which case why are they making HER plead innocent? Is this "law" or is it "The Military" way of reasoning? :headshake

Military rules require more scrutiny of guilty pleas, to discourage peons from being forced to confess falsely in order to protect their commanders. If a guilty plea seems ungenuine, it can be stricken. This is true in nonmilitary courts as well, but there's less emphasis on it.

In theory, this is to protect the peon, but like most rules it can be used to hurt them too by nullifying a plea bargain and exposing them to a longer sentence.

Where are Tom Cruise and Demi Moore when you need them? :p

Tonchi wrote:

Where are Tom Cruise and Demi Moore when you need them? :p

Robbing the cradle? ;)