Chelsea Manning

Kudos to mistermix for sorting the domain registration issue!

The recent hearings in PFC Bradley Manning’s court-martial concluded on Wednesday.  I was waiting for some clarification from a lawyer I know before posting but he’s as snowed under as ever so I’m going to run with what I have.   Any errors are mine, and not his.  Two sources of information, both coming through the Washington Post, here.  One appears to be a staff writer, and another is from the Associated Press.  I’ll leave it to you to figure out why two different stories on the same event run in two different parts of the paper and why they couldn’t just link their own writer’s work in the other section.  And they can’t figure out why they aren’t making money.

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Open Thread and Manning UpdatePost + Comments (100)

Not much going on.  It’s a grey, blustery day here in OKC.  Light rains off and on.  We’re hoping they can get the footers dug out in the next couple of days and maybe pour concrete for footers on Friday, when it’s supposed to be in the 60’s here.  At work, we are in a full court press to update the entire medical center and outlying clinics to Windows 7 with Office 2010 from XP/Office2007.  It’s mostly going smoothly, but we are running into the usual teething pains involved in replacing or upgrading 2300 computers and 14 servers spread over western Oklahoma.  Lastly, with the weather change, my left shoulder and arm are fucking killing me.  You all remember the accident I got in last June.  Well, I’m service-connected on my shoulders anyway (occupational illness of Infantrymen) and I can’t get into the Neurology or Pain clinics till next month.  It was so bad yesterday that I had to take a couple of oxycodone and hang out doing nothing.  Today is a little better.

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Manning Update and Open ThreadPost + Comments (106)

Here’s the story.  I haven’t read it yet.  I will as soon as I post this.

UPDATE:

A military judge on Tuesday reduced the potential sentence for an Army private accused of sending reams of classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.

Col. Denise Lind made the ruling during a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade for Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Lind found that Manning suffered illegal pretrial punishment during nine months in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. She awarded a total of 112 days off any prison sentence Manning gets if he is convicted.

Good for him, but I think he should have gotten the full potential of ten days credit for every day the Judge found that his confinement was “more rigorous than necessary.” She added that the conditions “became excessive in relation to legitimate government interests.”  I also think, for whatever it’s worth, that the charge and specification of “Aiding the Enemy” is excessive.  While I think he probably knew or should have known that his actions would do damage to the US and aggregate a net positive to the enemy, I do not, and never have thought that he ever planned or plotted to specifically benefit either the Taliban or the Iraqi insurgents.  I would not vote to convict on that charge if I were on a panel, and I can’t imagine the Trial Counsel telling me anything that would change that, barring showing us emails between him and Mullah Omar, for example.

This is occuring in the context of a hearing, scheduled for four days (this is day one) in which the defense is arguing that they should be able to introduce evidence of Manning’s motivation, in that they claim he intentionally tried to not damage the US government.

Prosecutors want the judge to bar the defense from producing evidence at Manning’s trial regarding his motive for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of secret war logs and diplomatic cables. They say motive is irrelevant to whether he leaked intelligence, knowing it would be seen by al Qaeda

Manning allegedly told an online confidant-turned-informant that he leaked the material because “I want people to see the truth” and “information should be free.”

Personally, I don’t buy it, but I’m not the Judge so that’s irrelevant.  Having said that, in the UCMJ the proper place to discuss motivation is at the Sentencing Phase, should it be necessary, as ‘matters in mitigation or extenuation.’  Motive is not an element of any crime under the UCMJ.

UPDATE:  Dissenter at FireDogLake was liveblogging from the court room.  Here‘s his/her take on it.  90 minutes for Judge Lind to read the whole ruling, will not be made available to the public–except, one assumes, under FOIA.

Open Thread.

Manning Case–Judge Reduces PFC Manning’s Potential Maximum SentencePost + Comments (92)

I haven’t been posting much because Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG has been more fun.  I play on server “The Shadowlands” if anybody is interested.

Military Judge COL Denise Lind announced this morning that she’s going to rule on Bradley Manning’s recent motion to dismiss all charges in his upcoming Court Martial, which is scheduled for May.It is highly unlikely that all charges will be dismissed.  Military Justice practitioners with whom I have spoken would consider a partial dismissal to be a huge win for the defense.  Far more likely is that any sentence would see a credit, should he be convicted of any crimes, not just for time served on a day for day basis, but possibly as many as ten days for every one day that she were to find were in violation of the law or DoD policy (which is essentially the same thing for the purposes of this discussion.)

We’ve started construction on the new house.  2100 square feet, 4bd, 3ba, 3car.  Hopefully it will be done in May.

Open Thread, also too.

UPDATE:  The following is added with respect to the hearing that is currently ongoing in Manning’s case:
” Today’s hearing focused on motions in limine and evidence of PFC Manning’s motivation in sending classified material to the Wikileaks website.  The court also heard from the government on motions to preclude evidence that information PFC Manning provided to Wikileaks was over-classified.”

Manning Case Update and Mid-day Open ThreadPost + Comments (105)

I was completely unaware that there is a hearing in Military Judge (COL) Denise Lind’s courtroom yesterday and today, and potentially tomorrow, in regards to PFC Bradley Manning’s conditions of Pre-Trial Confinement.

The Washington Post’s coverage

The Baltimore Sun’s coverage

The Asssociated Press, through the Army Times

Judge Lind has yet to rule on whether or not she’ll allow Manning to plead guilty to lesser included offenses as he has offered to do (called plea by exceptions and substitutions).

Open Thread, as well.

Manning Pre-Trial Confinement HearingPost + Comments (74)