By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

An investigative hearing has recommended that an American soldier be court-martialed over hazing that allegedly led to a fellow infantryman's suicide in Afghanistan, but dismissed the most serious charge against him, the U.S. military said Monday.

Spc. Ryan Offutt is one of eight soldiers charged in the death of 19-year-old Pvt. Danny Chen, who shot himself on Oct. 3 after what investigators say were weeks of physical abuse, humiliation and racial slurs.

A native New Yorker of Chinese descent, Chen had been in Afghanistan only two months when he shot himself in a guardhouse at a remote outpost in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

The investigative hearing recommended that Offutt, 32, be court-martialed on charges including assault, negligent homicide, and reckless endangerment, a statement from U.S. military said.

It said the hearing, which ended Sunday, did not recommend trial for an additional charge of involuntary manslaughter, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The most serious charge Offutt now faces is negligent homicide, which carries a prison sentence of up to three years.

The regional American military commander will make a final decision on any court-martial based on the hearing's recommendations, the U.S. statement said.

Attorneys for Offutt could not immediately be contacted. Offutt, a native of Greenville, Pa., joined the Army in 2006 and served 14 months in Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

An Egyptian military court has sentenced a political activist to two years in prison after convicting him of criticizing the armed forces and publishing false information.

Maikel Nabil Sanad was arrested in March and sentenced to three years, but the case was appealed and sent for retrial.

Sanad was arrested following posts on his blog comparing the military to the former regime of President Hosni Mubarak, toppled in February by a popular uprising. He also charged he was tortured by military police during an earlier detention.

He is one of 12,000 civilians who have faced military trials this year, a practice critics say deprives the accused of their rights.

Amnesty International considers Sanad a "prisoner of conscience," and the U.S. has expressed concern about his detention.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A Republican gay rights group on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow a California trial judge's order barring enforcement of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military to go back into effect.

Lawyers for Log Cabin Republicans asked the high court to vacate a 2–1 decision Monday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals keeping "don't ask, don't tell" in place until it considers the government's appeal of the judge's decision declaring the policy unconstitutional.

The Log Cabin group argued that the 9th Circuit panel abused its discretion when it blocked U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips' order requiring the armed forces to allow openly gay Americans to enlist and serve.

It said the divided panel erred in accepting the Pentagon's claim that it needed more time to develop procedures for integrating gay service members and "gave no consideration whatsoever to the injury that will befall" while "don't ask, don't tell" is in place.

"Unless the court of appeals stay is vacated, the respondents will be free to continue to investigate and discharge American service members for no reason other than their homosexuality, in violation of their due process and First Amendment rights," the group's lawyers wrote.

The request was directed to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who handles emergency motions from the 9th Circuit. Kennedy on Friday evening asked the Department of Justice to respond by 5 p.m. Wednesday.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has pledged to push the Senate to repeal the policy in the lame duck session before a new Congress is sworn in.

The policy was lifted for eight days last month after Phillips ruled that it violates the civil rights of gay Americans and issued an injunction barring the Pentagon from applying it. The Obama administration appealed and asked the appeals court to reinstate the ban until it could hear arguments on the broader constitutional issues next year.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A U.S. Army sergeant from North Carolina has pleaded guilty to murder in the 2008 death of a soldier from Kentucky who was pregnant with his child.

The Fayetteville Observer reports that Sgt. Edgar Patino of Hope Mills agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a lesser sentence.

A Cumberland County Superior Court judge has sentenced Patino to between 16 and 20 years in prison.

The 29-year-old was arrested in July 2008 after investigators found the body of 23-year-old Spc. Megan Touma of Cold Spring, Ky. in a Fayetteville hotel bathtub.

Touma was seven months' pregnant with Patino's child. The two had been stationed together first in Germany, then at Fort Bragg.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

An Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks has chosen a civilian attorney to lead his defense team.

The Army says former military attorney David Coombs, of Providence, R.I., will represent Pfc. Bradley Manning against charges he leaked video of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack that killed a Reuters news photographer and his driver. WikiLeaks posted the video on its website in April.

Investigators say the 22-year-old intelligence analyst also is a person of interest in the leak of nearly 77,000 Afghan war records WikiLeaks published online in July.

Coombs is best known for defending Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, charged in a deadly 2003 attack on fellow U.S. military members in Kuwait. Akbar is awaiting execution for murdering two officers.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A gay rights group wants a federal court in Idaho to block the U.S. Air Force from discharging an aviator under the "don't ask, don't tell" law that bars openly gay and lesbian military members from service.

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network filed its lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Boise, asking for a temporary restraining order to stop the Air Force from discharging Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach until a full hearing can be scheduled. It also wants the law declared unconstitutional.

Fehrenbach, a 19-year military member who has been decorated for his combat valor in Iraq, disclosed he was gay in 2008 as he defended himself against allegations investigated by the Boise Police Department that he raped another man. Fehrenbach said he had sex with the man, but it was consensual.

He was cleared of the rape allegations, including by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which found them to be without merit, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A military defense lawyer said Monday that he has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the upcoming war crimes trial of the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

The trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 10 for Omar Khadr and it would be the first at the U.S. Navy base under President Barack Obama's administration.

Khadr, son of a slain al-Qaida financier, is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and faces a maximum life sentence if convicted. The Toronto-born inmate was 15 when he was captured in 2002.

His attorney, Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, argues that the offshore system for prosecuting terror suspects is unconstitutional. Among other concerns, he said it is unfair because it is reserved only for non-U.S. citizens.

"The military commissions provide young Omar, a Canadian citizen, only second class justice. This kind of discrimination is something we cannot stand for as a country," Jackson said.

Jackson said he filed the emergency petition with the high court Monday because a federal appeals court in Washington had not acted on a request he filed four months ago.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A U.S. Army officer who approved supplies contracts in Iraq pleaded guilty Wednesday to lying about contents of a package he sent to the United States containing more than $100,000.

Maj. Charles E. Sublett told a judge Wednesday he sent almost $108,000 in sequentially numbered $100 bills and more than 17 million Iraqi dinar, then worth about $11,600, from Balad, Iraq, to his wife in Killeen, Texas.

Sublett also acknowledged he failed to file a Currency or Money Instruments Transaction Report disclosing the money was in the package, which U.S. customs law requires when sending more than $10,000 into or out of the country.

Instead, he listed the contents on the Federal Express package invoice as books, papers, a jewelry box and clothes valued at $140.

Customs officials in Memphis intercepted the package in January 2005. Sublett, 46, was indicted this past January.

In return for his guilty plea, the government agreed to dismiss a bulk cash smuggling charge. Outside court, neither Sublett nor his attorney Michael Stengel would discuss the money's origins, but there was no charge that it was stolen.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

The alleged ringleader of detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is appealing to the military's highest court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington will hear arguments Monday from lawyers for Spc. Charles Graner and the government.

The Army reservist from Uniontown, Pa., is serving 10 years for stacking naked prisoners into a pyramid, knocking one of them out with a punch and ordering prisoners to perform sex acts while other soldiers took pictures in 2003.

The defense says it was wrongly denied access to then-classified documents showing that some of the detainee treatment reflected "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The government says any relevant information was already publicly available.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A soldier acquitted of killing a mother and two of her young daughters in North Carolina about 25 years ago is now going on trial in military court after prosecutors say new DNA tests link him to the crimes.

Master Sgt. Timothy Hennis, 51, is charged with premeditated murder in the May 1985 stabbing deaths of Kathryn Eastburn and two of her daughters — 5-year-old Kara Sue and 3-year-old Erin Nicole. Opening statements in the court-martial are set for Wednesday and the death penalty trial could last up to two months, featuring 100 or more witnesses.

Hennis couldn't be tried again in civilian court so he was charged by the military, which can pursue the case because its court system is a different jurisdiction. Hennis retired from the Army in 2004 but was recalled to active duty to face charges.

Hennis, who had adopted the Eastburns' dog several days before the killings, was arrested four days after the bodies were found when a witness who reported seeing someone in the Eastburns' driveway late at night picked him out of a photo lineup.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.