The parking lot was packed, and multiple news vans were lined up near the back of the lot. I didn’t see any reporters out front ... probably because what looked to be fifty or maybe a hundred military police were throughout the lot and in front of the building. A lot of people were streaming toward the door.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “You can just drop me off. It’s gonna be a lot of ... a lot of crap. And lies, some of it.”
I grabbed his arm. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Ray.”
He smiled, and kissed me, and then we walked toward the building. Of course we were both nervous as hell, both scared, and both of us were trying to be strong for the other one. Sometimes it just worked that way with us.
Dick Elmore met us at the door. “Come on,” he said, waving us down a hallway and into the office, which had been turned over to him for the duration of the trial. Dick had explained it to me already. The Army had no permanent standing court, and everyone involved, from the judge to the court-martial board members, had been seconded from whatever their normal duties were. The trial itself was being held in the lobby of a building undergoing renovations. The work had been halted for the trial, but stacks of drywall and other building materials were scattered throughout the hallways and offices.
“Any changes?” Ray asked.
Elmore shook his head. “No.”
Technically the trial had begun on Monday. The first two days, however, had been purely procedural: questioning and selection of potential board members. As Elmore had explained to me, the court-martial board essentially acted as a jury. And, as Elmore said, because this was a capitol case, the board had twelve members, seven officers and five enlisted men. Ray and Elmore had both fretted the fact that few of the board members were infantry.
“Bunch of desk jockeys don’t know shit about war,” Elmore had muttered when the selection was finished, but then he recovered his composure and kept charging forward. Today he was all smiles and confidence.
“Okay. So the media is in force today. But they’ve been given strict instructions by the judge to keep quiet, or he’ll close the trial. But be prepared, there’s going to be a lot of cameras on you.”
“Will Ray be testifying today?”
Elmore shook his head. “No. Trial counsel goes first and presents everything. And they’ve got a weak-ass case. They’re calling four witnesses. No physical evidence. Then we get our chance. We ready?”
Ray swallowed and squeezed my hand lightly. “Yeah,” he said.
Grounds for an appeal (Ray)
The military judge was an older man, probably in his sixties, with white hair crowning dark brown skin and a tightly trimmed mustache. “Colonel Martinez is a stickler,” Elmore told me on the first day of the trial. “I’m pretty sure he’d rather die of torture than have one of his trials sullied by any shenanigans. He’ll be tough, but fair.”
This morning, Colonel Martinez was all business. He opened the trial with a minimum of fuss, gave instructions to the board members, then called Elmore and the trial counsel up to the head of the room.
Everything you’ve ever seen on television about a trial? Forget that. Everything is different.
The trial counsel—or prosecutor—was pissing me off. Captain Frank Cox was a blonde haired, blue-eyed former Texas A&M fullback who had gone to law school on the Army’s dime and was now working off his sentence. I didn’t follow all of the legal arguments and mumbo-jumbo during the pre-trial stuff. But when it came time for peremptory challenges to the members of the court-martial board, he’d challenged the one and only real combat veteran on the panel. I didn’t tell Carrie how much that chilled me. But it did. Elmore had said, “Most of these guys have never had to deal with a real infantryman, Sherman, unless he was on an operating table. You scare the crap out of them. But you’ve still got the fact that you’re the one who reported this thing in the first place going for you.”
That just meant I went on trial first. Colton’s trial was scheduled to start in three weeks, followed by the others, who were accused of lesser charges.
The first witness called was Major Janice Smalls. When she was called to the stand, Captain Cox stood in front of her and said, “Raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
“I do.”
I leaned close to Elmore and asked, “Why is the prosecutor swearing her in?”
He whispered back, “That’s how we do it in courts-martial.”
I guess it didn’t matter. Captain Cox asked Smalls a series of questions to establish her identity and expertise as a criminal investigator. That out of the way, he started in on the real questions.
“Major Smalls, can you describe how you first became aware of the subject of your investigation.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Right before Thanksgiving, I was contacted by the Chief of Staff to General Buelles of the Military District of Washington. He reported that the Inspector General’s office had received, via U.S. Mail, a package that reported a crime in Afghanistan. I was asked to conduct a preliminary investigation.”
“What date was this, Major Smalls?”
“November 19, 2012.”
“And what did you do at that time?”
“On the morning of the 20th I drove to the Pentagon to personally take charge of the evidence. I secured the evidence, which consisted of a handwritten report and a thumb drive, then returned to headquarters at Fort Belvoir. At that time I made witnessed copies of the report, and we made a duplicate
