Last week’s news was dominated by three train wrecks — one of them involving an Asian American.
First, there was that female astronaut involved in a love triangle, who embarrassed NASA partially for her use of space diapers (the ones that soak up all that Tang astronauts drink while in their space suits) while she drove hundreds of miles from Texas to Florida on a mission to “neutralize” her love rival.
And then we had the famous no-talent celebrity who tragically and mysteriously died, setting off a repetitive media frenzy worthy of an American Princess Diana that only exposed just how empty celebrity can be.
Given all that, I would be surprised if any of you remember what happened to Army First Lt. Ehren Watada last week.
His story had neither space diapers nor the dead body of a buxom blonde.
But just think of Iraq with 3,000 U.S. war dead and counting.
If you’re against the war, Lt. Watada is your proxy.
As the first commissioned officer to openly reject the Iraq War as illegal and refuse deployment to that country, Watada is the man who has single-handedly carried the war protest movement on his epaulets.
Watada’s trial for refusal to deploy began last week.
But suddenly, on Feb. 7, his court martial came off the tracks.
To military and government officials, it was the major train wreck of the week.
STIPULATION LEADS TO MISTRIAL
According to those present in the Fort Lewis, Washington, courtroom, the trial didn’t have to be stopped.
In fact, both Watada’s defense team AND the prosecutors wanted the trial to go on, and at one point urged the judge to continue.
But the military judge, Lt. Col John Head, had a change of heart over a 12-page stipulation written by the Army, that had been signed and agreed to by both prosecution and defense a week earlier, and then gone over, edited and corrected by the judge himself.
That document laid out the framework of the case and limited the charges against Watada to refusal to deploy.
The stipulation triggered the agreement whereby two other charges exposing Watada to two additional years in prison were dropped. When Watada admitted he talked to reporters about how the war was a violation of the Constitution and the War Powers Act, the Army — seeking to avoid dragging in reporters to testify — removed the extra charges.
The rest of the stipulation, with all the relevant facts, was given to the 7-member panel of officers serving as jury on Feb. 6.
Then, on Wednesday something happened.
Bill Simpich, an Oakland-based civil rights attorney covering the trial for Truthout.org, reported that things unraveled when the judge received a suggested legal instruction from defense attorney Eric Seitz.
Previously, the judge had ruled that the Army’s order given Watada to deploy was legal. It essentially took away Watada’s defense that the war was illegal. But it didn’t waive any other legal defenses available to Watada.
So Seitz came back and proposed that the jury not consider the legality of the war itself, but whether Watada had a reasonable right to believe that the war was illegal.
That’s when Simpich and others believe the judge panicked.
They feel that the judge feared his courtroom would become a tribunal over the war, whether he wanted it to or not.
And that’s what no one in the military or the government wants: a forum that puts the war on trial.
The only way for the judge to get out of the situation, Simpich and others say, was to try to assert that Seitz’s instructions were a mistake that somehow spoiled the jury, though as Simpich points out, the jury never saw the instructions.
Suddenly, the stipulation of facts that everyone had seen before the trial as an agreement was not quite the document everyone thought.
The judge now saw it as Watada’s admission of guilt, a confessional stipulation.
Watada and his attorney said it wasn’t. Indeed, Watada reiterated his failure to deploy was intentional and based on his belief that the war was illegal. They saw the stipulation as a necessary part of their case.
In the end, it was the prosecution that asked for the mistrial, to the protest of the defense. But the judge granted the motion and set a new trial date in March.
It won’t be that easy.
The judge just handed Watada a defense.
TIME FOR WITHDRAWAL?
Once the trial began, and the jury heard the facts, the legal term became applicable: “Jeopardy is attached.”
In this country, they only get one shot at you for the same charges. Hence a second trial, subjecting one to double jeopardy, is usually not possible.
Now it’s the biggest reason a new trial in March, or anytime soon, is unlikely.
Watada’s lawyers vow to challenge any new trial all the way to the Supreme Court, and that could take years.
Perhaps it’s time for the U.S. to seriously consider giving up its vendetta on a soldier. A dishonorable discharge for Watada would end the government’s embarrassment.
Just like they blew the war, U.S. and military officials may have blown their case against Lt. Watada.