Jury To Get Case Of Soldier Charged With Rape And Murder

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) _ Prosecutors rested after struggling to overcome a soldier's recanting of his story that a comrade accused of conspiring to rape and kill an Iraqi girl and her family took

Friday, August 3rd 2007, 7:36 am

By: News On 6

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) _ Prosecutors rested after struggling to overcome a soldier's recanting of his story that a comrade accused of conspiring to rape and kill an Iraqi girl and her family took part in the attack.

A military jury was expected to begin deliberating Friday, a day after prosecutors rested their case against Pfc. Jesse Spielman after calling only four witnesses. The witnesses included two military investigators who testified they interviewed the accused soldiers for exhausting periods that may have sullied their sworn statements.

Spielman, 22, of Chambersburg, Pa., is charged with rape and murder in the March 12, 2006, assault of a 14-year-old girl and her family in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad.

Spc. James Barker, who has admitted his own role in the assault, has testified that he allowed investigators to draft sworn statements for him that wrongly implicated Spielman in the crime.

Prosecutors called their last witness Thursday after presenting little evidence from the assault beyond soldiers' statements, crime scene photographs and videos of the path soldiers followed in the assault.

Defense attorneys have said they will call only a handful of witnesses to testify Friday.

Also Thursday, an Army psychiatrist, Lt. Col. Elizabeth Bowler, was sworn in to testify Thursday but sought complete immunity from prosecution, telling the court outside the jury's presence that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination without immunity.

Bowler treated at least three of the soldiers involved in the case as head of a combat stress team attached to Spielman's unit. The Justice Department on Thursday denied a second request to grant Bowler immunity after meeting with military prosecutors. U.S. attorneys first denied Bowler immunity last month.

Defense attorneys have said the information military psychiatrists have about the mental state of the soldiers is critical to their arguments.

Questionable practices and undocumented distribution of medication to soldiers could have left them in a mental state in which they were unable to recognize both the nature of the crime and that there was any conspiracy to commit it, attorneys have said.

Three soldiers have pleaded guilty for their roles in the slayings and received sentences of five to 100 years under plea agreements with prosecutors.

During their courts-martial, Barker and Sgt. Paul E. Cortez testified they took turns raping the girl while Steven D. Green shot and killed her mother, father and younger sister. Green shot the girl in the head after raping her, they said. The girl's body was set on fire with kerosene to destroy the evidence, according to previous testimony.

Green, who was discharged from the Army before being charged, faces a possible death sentence when he is tried in federal court in Kentucky. He has pleaded not guilty to charges that include murder and sexual assault.

Spielman on Monday pleaded guilty to lesser charges of conspiracy to obstructing justice, arson, wrongfully touching a corpse and drinking.