http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30874700
An ex-soldier convicted of raping and killing an Iraqi teen and murdering her family was spared the death penalty Thursday and will serve a life sentence after jurors couldn't agree unanimously on a punishment for a brutal crime that the defense blamed partly on combat stress and a lack of military leadership.
After an afternoon of card playing, sex talk and drinking Iraqi whiskey, Pfc. Steven Dale Green, 24, of Midland, Texas, and three other soldiers in March 2006 went to the home of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Green shot and killed the teen's mother, father and sister, then became the third soldier to rape the girl before shooting her in the face.
Federal jurors who convicted Green of rape and murder on May 7 told the judge they couldn't agree on the appropriate sentence after deliberating for more than 10 hours over two days. Their choices were a death sentence or life in prison without parole. Since they could not unanimously agree on either sentence, life in prison had to be the verdict"
I think he has done more than enough to deserve to be hanged. What do you think?
Why not return him to Iraq and have the Iraqis put him on trial? You think they wouldn't hang him? Sure they would.
I am not a supporter of capital punishment but I must say that if an Iraqi soldier had done this to an American family, I seriously doubt that a US court would have taken the excuse about "combat stress" and "lack of proper military leadership".
Life in prison looks to me like a more severe punishment than the death sentence. To know that you will live all your life in prison... to have the time to re-live over and over again the crime(s) you committed... Firing squad or electrical chair is easier way out
>>>he deserved what God is preparing for him...
this is a particlarly gruesome crime!! Iraqi trial for him, i say.