William Laws Calley Jr. | |
---|---|
Born | Miami, Florida, U.S. | June 8, 1943
Criminal status | Released |
Conviction(s) | Premeditated murder (22 counts) Assault with intent to commit murder |
Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment with hard labor; commuted to 20 years imprisonment; commuted to 10 years imprisonment; commuted to three years of house arrest by President Richard Nixon |
Military career | |
Allegiance | United States |
Service/ | United States Army |
Years of service | 1966–1971 |
Rank | Second lieutenant [1] |
Unit | 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) |
Battles/wars |
William Laws Calley Jr. (born June 8, 1943) is a former United States Army officer and war criminal who was convicted by court-martial for the murder of 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. Calley was released to house arrest under orders by President Richard Nixon three days after his conviction. A new trial was ordered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit but that ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court. Calley served three years of house arrest for the murders. Public opinion at the time about Calley was divided. [2] Since his dismissal from the U.S. Army and release from prison, Calley has avoided public attention.
Calley was born in Miami, Florida. His father, William Laws Calley Sr., was a United States Navy veteran of World War II. Calley Jr. graduated from Miami Edison High School in Miami and then attended Palm Beach Junior College in 1963. He dropped out in 1964, having failed a majority of his classes. [3]
Calley then had a variety of jobs before enlistment in 1966, [4] including as a bellhop, dishwasher, salesman, insurance appraiser, and train conductor. [5]
Calley underwent eight weeks of basic combat training at Fort Bliss, Texas, [6] followed by eight weeks of advanced individual training as a company clerk at Fort Lewis, Washington. Having scored high enough on his Armed Forces Qualification tests, he applied for and was accepted into Officer Candidate School (OCS). [5]
He then began 26 weeks of junior officer training at Fort Benning in mid-March 1967. Upon graduating from OCS Class No. 51 on September 7, 1967, [5] he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. He was assigned to 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division "The Americal Division" , [1] and began training at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, in preparation for deployment to South Vietnam.
Calley's evaluations described him as average as an officer. [3] Later, as the My Lai investigation progressed, a more negative picture emerged. Men in his platoon reported to Army investigators that Calley lacked common sense and could not read a map or compass properly. [7]
In May or June 1969 near Chu Lai Base Area, Calley and two other Americal Division officers were in a jeep that passed a jeep containing five Marines. The Army jeep pulled the Marines over and one Army officer told the Marines "You soldiers better square away!" One of the Marines replied, "We ain't soldiers, motherfucker, we're Marines!" The Army lieutenants dismounted for further discussion of the matter. The ensuing fight ended only after one of the Army officers pulled his pistol and fired a round into the air. Two of the officers were briefly hospitalized, while Calley was beaten up. The Marines pleaded guilty at special courts-martial, where they stipulated they had not known the soldiers had been officers. [8]
In March 1968 Calley and several other soldiers arrived at the village of My Lai where they murdered hundreds of civilians consisting mostly of elderly men, women, children, and infants from allied South Vietnam. Calley would later claim in court that an air strike had killed the innocent civilians. There was no sign of enemy combatants in My Lai when he and his men arrived. In the My Lai museum in Vietnam, a marble plaque lists the names and ages of the victims. The count of the dead is a total of 504 people from 247 families. 24 families lost everyone - three generations, no survivors. Included in the 504 were 60 elderly men, and 282 women (17 of whom were pregnant). A total of 173 children were killed; 53 were infants.
The events in My Lai were initially covered up by the U.S. Army. [9] In April 1969, nearly 13 months after the massacre, Ron Ridenhour, a GI who had been with the 11th Brigade, wrote letters to the President, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense and 30 members of Congress. In these letters, Ridenhour described some of the atrocities committed by the soldiers at My Lai that he had been told about. [10]
Due to Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention excluding allied civilians from the status of protected persons in an international armed conflict, Calley and his fellow soldiers could not be legally tried as war criminals. [11] [12] [13] Calley was instead charged on September 5, 1969, with six specifications of premeditated murder under Article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) [13] for the deaths of 109 South Vietnamese civilians near the village of Son My, at a hamlet called My Lai. As many as 500 villagers – mostly women, children, infants, and the elderly – had been systematically killed by U.S. soldiers during a bloody rampage on March 16, 1968. Upon conviction, Calley could have faced the death penalty. On November 12, 1969, investigative reporters Seymour Hersh [14] and Wayne Greenhaw [15] broke the story and revealed that Calley had been charged with murdering 109 South Vietnamese. [16]
Calley's trial started on November 17, 1970. It was the military prosecution's contention that Calley, in defiance of the rules of engagement, ordered his men to deliberately murder unarmed Vietnamese civilians, even though his men were not under enemy fire at all. Testimony revealed that Calley had ordered the men of 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry of the 23rd Infantry Division to kill everyone in the village. [17]
In presenting the case, the two military prosecutors, Aubrey M. Daniel III and John Partin, were hamstrung by the reluctance of many soldiers to testify against Calley. Some soldiers refused to answer questions on the witness stand by citing the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. [18]
One holdout, Private First Class Paul David Meadlo, having been granted immunity, [19] was ordered by Judge Reid W. Kennedy to testify or face contempt of court charges. [18] Meadlo thus took the stand and recounted that as he stood guard over some 30 villagers whom he, along with Private Dennis Conti, had gathered at a defoliated area at the hamlet's southern tip, he was approached by Calley and told, regarding the civilians, "You know what to do with 'em." [18] Meadlo took that as orders to only keep watch over them. Calley, however, returned 10 minutes later and became enraged by the fact that the villagers were still alive. After telling Meadlo that he had wanted them dead, Calley backed up about 20 feet, opened fire on them himself and ordered Meadlo to join in, which he did. Meadlo then proceeded to round up more villagers to be massacred. [18]
Conti's testimony corroborated that given by Meadlo, and laid the blame on Calley not only for the initiation of the massacre but also for the participation in it by his subordinates. [20] Another witness, Leonard Gonzalez, told of finding seven women, all naked, all dead, killed by several M-79 grenade launcher rounds. [21]
Calley's original defense, that the death of the villagers was the result of an accidental airstrike, was overcome by prosecution witnesses. In his new defense, Calley claimed he was following the orders of his immediate superior, Captain Ernest Medina. Whether this order was actually given is disputed; Medina was acquitted of all charges relating to the incident at a separate trial in August 1971. [22]
Taking the witness stand, Calley, under the direct examination by his civilian defense lawyer George W. Latimer, claimed that on the previous day, his commanding officer, Captain Medina, made it clear that his unit was to move into the village and that everyone was to be shot, saying that they all were Viet Cong. [23] [24] Medina publicly denied that he had ever given such orders and stated that he had meant enemy soldiers, while Calley assumed that his order to "kill the enemy" meant to kill everyone. On direct examination during his court martial, Calley stated:
Well, I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job on that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women, and children. They were all classified the same, and that was the classification that we dealt with, just as enemy soldiers...I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and I carried out the orders that I was given, and I do not feel wrong in doing so, sir. [25]
Latimer also used Calley's low intelligence and poor performance in training as a defense, arguing that Calley was incompetent, should not have been made an infantry officer, and had been commissioned only because of manpower shortages. [26]
The prosecution called over 100 witnesses to testify against Calley during the trial. After President Nixon intervened in the trial, the assistant prosecutor, Captain Partin, wrote a letter to the White House saying that the presidential intervention had "degraded" and "defiled" the military justice system. [27]
After deliberating for 79 hours, the six-officer jury (five of whom had served in Vietnam) convicted him on March 29, 1971, of the premeditated murder of 22 South Vietnamese civilians. On March 31, 1971, Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor at Fort Leavenworth, [28] which includes the United States Disciplinary Barracks, the Department of Defense's only maximum security prison. Calley was the only one convicted of the 26 officers and soldiers initially charged for their part in the My Lai massacre or the subsequent cover-up. [29] Many observers saw My Lai as a direct result of the military's attrition strategy with its emphasis on body counts and kill ratios. [30]
Many in the United States were outraged by what they perceived to be an overly harsh sentence for Calley. Georgia's Governor, Jimmy Carter, future President of the United States, instituted American Fighting Man's Day, and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on. [31] Indiana's Governor Edgar Whitcomb asked that all state flags be flown at half-staff for Calley, and the governors of Utah and Mississippi also publicly disagreed with the verdict. [31] The legislatures of Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, New Jersey, and South Carolina requested clemency for Calley. [31] Alabama's governor, George Wallace, visited Calley in the stockade and requested that President Richard Nixon pardon him. After the conviction, the White House received over 5,000 telegrams; the ratio was 100 to 1 in favor of leniency. [32] In a telephone survey of the U.S. public, 79 percent disagreed with the verdict, 81 percent believed that the life sentence Calley had received was too stern, and 69 percent believed Calley had been made a scapegoat. [32]
Nixon received so many telegrams from Americans requesting clemency or a pardon for William Calley that he remarked to Henry Kissinger, "Most people don't give a shit whether he killed them or not." [33]
In a recollection on the Vietnam War, South Korea's "Vietnam Expeditionary Forces" commander Chae Myung-shin stated that "Calley tried to get revenge for the deaths of his troops. In a war, this is natural." [34] Conversely, U.S. Army Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr. declared that Calley and Medina should have been hanged, drawn, and quartered, with their remains placed "at the gates of Fort Benning, at the Infantry School, as a reminder to those who pass under it of what an infantry officer ought to be." [35] [36]
Three days after Calley's conviction, President Richard Nixon ordered Calley removed from prison and placed under house arrest at Fort Benning. [37] On August 20, 1971, Lt. Gen. Albert O. Connor, Commanding General of Third Army, [38] in his capacity as the convening authority, reduced Calley's sentence to 20 years in prison. [39] As required by law, his conviction and sentence were reviewed and sustained by the United States Army Court of Military Review, and the United States Court of Military Appeals. [40]
Calley appealed his conviction to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. On February 27, 1974, Judge J. Robert Elliott granted a writ of habeas corpus and set Calley free on bail. The court held that Calley had been improperly convicted due to extensive pre-trial publicity, the military court's refusal to permit certain defense witnesses, the refusal of the United States House of Representatives to release testimony about the My Lai massacre taken in executive session, and inadequate notice of charges. [41] As the Army appealed Judge Elliott's decision, Secretary of the Army Howard H. Callaway reviewed Calley's conviction and sentence as required by law. After reviewing the conclusions of the court-martial, Court of Military Review, and Court of Military Appeals, Callaway reduced Calley's sentence to just 10 years. Under military regulations, a prisoner is eligible for parole after serving one-third of his sentence. This made Calley eligible for parole after serving three years and four months. [38]
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the district court's ruling and returned Calley to custody on June 13, 1974. [42] Calley once more appealed his conviction to Judge Elliott. He asked the Circuit Justice of the Fifth Circuit, Lewis F. Powell Jr., to set him free on bail while his appeal was pending, but Justice Powell denied the request. [43]
The district court once more found the pre-trial publicity, the denial of defense witnesses, and improperly drawn charges had denied Calley a fair trial, and ordered him released on September 25, 1974. [44] Calley was released on bail while the government appealed the ruling. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the Army's latest appeal en banc . The full court ruled 8-to-5 to overturn the district court, and ordered Calley's conviction and sentence reinstated on September 10, 1975. [45] Because Calley had less than 10 days to serve before his possible parole, and because Army Secretary Callaway had expressed his intention to parole Calley as soon as possible, the Army refused to incarcerate Calley for the remaining 10 days of his sentence. [46]
Calley appealed the Fifth Circuit's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it declined to hear his case on April 5, 1976. [47]
On May 15, 1976, Calley married Penny Vick, the daughter of a Columbus, Georgia, jewelry store owner. Judge J. Robert Elliott attended the wedding. [48] The couple had one son [49] and divorced in 2005 or 2006. [50] Calley worked at his father-in-law's store and became a gemologist and obtained his real estate license, which had initially been denied due to his criminal record. [27] [49] During his divorce, Calley claimed to be suffering from prostate cancer and gastrointestinal problems leaving him with no chance of earning a living. [27]
On August 19, 2009, while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus, Calley issued an apology for his role in the My Lai massacre. Calley said:
There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry. [51]
As of 2018, he was living in Gainesville, Florida. [27]
The My Lai massacre was a war crime committed by United States Army personnel on 16 March 1968, involving the mass murder of unarmed civilians in Sơn Tịnh district, South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. Between 347 and 504 civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment and Company B, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children who were as young as 12. It is the largest publicized massacre of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century.
The Americal Division was an infantry division of the United States Army during World War II and the Vietnam War.
Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. was a United States Army officer, serving as a warrant officer in the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division. He is credited with ending the Mỹ Lai Massacre of the South Vietnamese village known as Sơn Mỹ on March 16, 1968, alongside and hierarchically above Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn.
Lawrence Manley Colburn was a United States Army veteran who, while serving as a helicopter gunner in the Vietnam War, intervened in the March 16, 1968 Mỹ Lai massacre.
Glenn Urban Andreotta was an American helicopter crew chief in the Vietnam War noted for being one of three who intervened in the Mỹ Lai massacre, in which 504 unarmed children, women and men were murdered.
Ronald Lee Ridenhour was an American known for having played a central role in spurring the federal investigation of the 1968 Mỹ Lai massacre in Vietnam. When he first learned of events there, he was serving in the United States 11th Infantry Brigade in Vietnam. He gathered evidence and interviewed people before the end of his tour. After returning to the US in 1969, he wrote to President Nixon, members of his cabinet and two dozen Congressmen recounting what he had learned. A full-scale Department of Defense investigation eventually took place.
Ernest Lou Medina was a captain of infantry in the United States Army. He served during the Vietnam War. He was the commanding officer of Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry of the 11th Brigade, Americal Division, the unit responsible for the My Lai massacre of 16 March 1968. He was court-martialed in 1971 for his role in that massacre, but acquitted the same year.
Samuel William Koster was a career officer in the United States Army. He attained the rank of major general, and was most notable for his service as commander of the Americal Division and Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. A veteran of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, Koster was slated for promotion to lieutenant general before receiving a reduction in rank to brigadier general and retiring as a result of his efforts to minimize the details of the My Lai Massacre.
The Haditha massacre was a series of killings on November 19, 2005, in which a group of United States Marines killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The killings occurred in the city of Haditha in Iraq's western province of Al Anbar. Among the dead were men, women, elderly people and children as young as 1, who were shot multiple times at close range while unarmed. The ensuing massacre took place after an improvised explosive device exploded near a convoy, killing a lance corporal and severely injuring two other marines. The immediate reaction was to seize 5 men in a nearby taxi and execute them on the street.
The National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. war crimes in Vietnam was founded in New York by Ralph Schoenman in November 1969 to document American atrocities throughout Indochina. The formation of the organization was prompted by the disclosure of the My Lai Massacre on November 12, 1969, by Seymour Hersh, writing for the New York Times. The group was the first to bring to public attention the testimony of American Vietnam War veterans who had witnessed or participated in atrocities.
The 20th Infantry Regiment is a United States Army infantry regiment. Currently only the 5th Battalion of the 20th Infantry still exists. Stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and part of the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, 5-20 Infantry was one of the original battalions selected to take part in the testing and fielding of the U.S. Army's then-new Stryker vehicle. During the Vietnam War, elements of the regiment carried out the My Lai massacre.
Superior orders, also known as the Nuremberg defense or just following orders, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether a member of the military, law enforcement, or the civilian population, should not be considered guilty of committing crimes that were ordered by a superior officer or official.
Members of the United States Armed Forces have violated the law of war after the signing of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the signing of the Geneva Conventions. The United States prosecutes offenders through the War Crimes Act of 1996 as well as through articles in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The United States signed the 1999 Rome Statute but it never ratified the treaty, taking the position that the International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks fundamental checks and balances. The American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002 further limited US involvement with the ICC. The ICC reserves the right of states to prosecute war crimes, and the ICC can only proceed with prosecution of crimes when states do not have willingness or effective and reliable processes to investigate for themselves. The United States says that it has investigated many of the accusations alleged by the ICC prosecutors as having occurred in Afghanistan, and thus does not accept ICC jurisdiction over its nationals.
Schacht v. United States, 398 U.S. 58 (1970), was a United States Supreme Court case, which ruled that actors could wear accurate military uniforms—regardless of the production's portrayal of the military—on First Amendment grounds.
And babies is an iconic anti-Vietnam War poster. It is a famous example of "propaganda art" from the Vietnam War, that uses a color photograph of the My Lai Massacre taken by U.S. combat photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on March 16, 1968. It shows about a dozen dead and partly naked South Vietnamese women and babies in contorted positions stacked together on a dirt road, killed by U.S. forces. The picture is overlaid in semi-transparent blood-red lettering that asks along the top "Q. And babies?", and at the bottom answers "A. And babies." The quote is from a Mike Wallace CBS News television interview with U.S. soldier Paul Meadlo, who participated in the massacre. The lettering was sourced from The New York Times, which printed a transcript of the Meadlo interview the day after.
Task Force Barker was a United States Army task force under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Frank A. Barker during the Vietnam War. While a part of Task Force Barker, U.S. Army soldiers from Company C of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division committed the My Lai Massacre in 1968.
Đức Phổ Base Camp is a former U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army base in the Đức Phổ District, Quảng Ngãi Province Vietnam.
George Webster Latimer was a Utah lawyer best known for representing Lt. William Calley Jr. in his court martial for the My Lai incident. Latimer was also a justice of the Utah Supreme Court from 1946 to 1951 and one of the three original members of the U.S. Court of Military Appeals from 1951 to 1961.
Oran Kenneth Henderson was a United States Army colonel who commanded the 11th Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division during the Vietnam War and later served as head of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency in the late 1970s. He is most famous for his role in the My Lai massacre where he served as brigade commander for the units involved in the killings, ultimately being charged and acquitted of dereliction of duty for failing to carry out an adequate investigation and lying to Army investigators. He was the highest-ranking Army officer to be tried in connection with the killings. Prior to the Vietnam War, Henderson had served as an infantry officer in World War II and the Korean War.
Rape during the Vietnam War, as well as other acts of wartime sexual violence, was committed against Vietnamese civilians by military personnel from the United States, South Korea, and other combatants. According to American academic Elisabeth Jean Wood, wartime rape was frequently committed by U.S. troops because their commanders tolerated them. Weaver stated that not only were documented crimes against Vietnamese women by United States military personnel ignored during the international legal discourse which occurred immediately after the war, but modern feminists and other anti-war rape campaigners, as well as historians, have continued to dismiss them.
Calley was a member of the Alpha Company, 1st battalion, 20th infantry regiment, 11th infantry brigade while in Vietnam.
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