The government is asking the military’s highest court to reconsider last month's ruling that overturned the murder conviction of Marine Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, keeping the Plymouth native in the brig and away from his family.
Military prosecutors argued in a motion filed to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on Monday that it should reinstate Hutchins' conviction. Hutchins led an eight-man squad accused of kidnapping an Iraqi man from his home in April 2006, marching him to a ditch and shooting him to death in the village of Hamdania.
Hutchins was found guilty. The squad claimed it was looking for a suspected insurgent, but, when they did not find him, prosecutors allege they took another Iraqi man and shot him dead, leaving a shovel and an AK-47 to make him look like an insurgent.
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In the June 26 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces found Hutchins gave a statement to a U.S. Navy investigator while in custody that should have been ruled inadmissible and tainted his court-martial.
Hutchins claimed that his constitutional rights were violated when he was held in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer for seven days during his interrogation in Iraq.
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