CAMP PENDLETON –
With a guilty plea in the bag, prosecutors in the murder case against Marine Cpl. Trent D. Thomas would have been forgiven for pulling some punches at yesterday's sentencing hearing.
Cpl. Trent
Thomas
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After all, Thomas had taken the stand last month as part of a plea agreement and acknowledged his crimes. He gave a detailed account of how he and seven other Camp Pendleton servicemen kidnapped Hashim Ibrahim Awad and shot him to death April 26 in Hamdaniya, Iraq. Thomas also agreed to testify against his co-defendants.
But prosecutors were not in a forgiving mood yesterday as they laid out their case for a just punishment to military judge Lt. Col. Tracy A. Daly.
The judge will issue a sentence even though Thomas' sealed plea agreement already includes a sentence determined by Lt. Gen. James Mattis. Under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, Thomas will get the lesser of those two sentences.
Thomas, 25, has pleaded guilty to charges including unpremeditated murder and assault. In previous months, four other Hamdaniya suspects pleaded guilty to lesser charges and received prison terms from less than a year to 21 months.
One of those men, Navy Hospitalman Recruit Melson J. Bacos, yesterday spoke on behalf of the prosecution.
Bacos said, “It's not easy at all” to testify against Thomas, whom he described as a friend who had often attended church with him.
Bacos recalled how Thomas led a four-person team that abducted Awad from his home. Bacos said the four kidnappers – himself, Thomas, Lance Cpl. Robert B. Pennington and Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda – next dragged the victim to a roadside hole. Then Thomas tied Awad's feet and Pennington stuffed a gag into the Iraqi's mouth, Bacos testified.
Bacos said he saw Thomas shoot Awad at close range.
“And you remember seeing Cpl. Thomas shooting Mr. Awad in the chest?” asked Capt. Nick Gannon, the junior member of the prosecution team.
“Yes, sir,” said Bacos, who was almost whispering during his time on the stand.
“When everything was cleaned up, I remember (our squad leader) saying, 'Congratulations, we just got away with murder, gents,' ” Bacos said.
People attending yesterday's hearing included Erica Thomas, wife of the accused. She said her husband is a devout Christian who attended Bible school at Messenger College in Joplin, Mo., before joining the Marine Corps. The couple have a 2-year-old daughter, Kayla.
Erica Thomas sat quietly in the courtroom, but said that's not how she felt inside.
“Sometimes I wanted to object,” she said. “(The prosecutors) need to be in these guys' shoes to know what combat is like. My husband is a good person . . . and it makes me upset that the court process has been so long.”
She insisted that Thomas is keeping a positive attitude amid his adversities.
“He's got no animosity against someone” in the case, she said.
Erica Thomas said there's a big difference between her husband's current incarceration in the Camp Pendleton brig and his deployment to Iraq.
“I don't have to worry about getting a knock at the door and two men letting me know that he died” in combat, she said.
Starting today, the defense is expected to begin calling the first of 27 witnesses, including an expert in post-traumatic stress disorder.
“It is the most witnesses I have ever called in a court-martial,” said Victor Kelley, the civilian defense attorney for Thomas. “Some are friends and family and others are Marines he served with.”
The unusually high number of defense witnesses might be a strategy to portray Thomas in a sympathetic light with the judge, some legal analysts are saying. They say the tactic is needed because unlike the other defendants who have entered into plea agreements, Thomas played a larger role in Awad's killing and he's the only one who has pleaded guilty to murder.
