How to get your case off to a bad start in one easy lesson. Just trivialise well publicised crimes. Works every time.
A lawyer for Charles Graner, the accused ringleader in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, has compared piling naked prisoners into pyramids to cheerleader shows and says leashing inmates was also acceptable prisoner control."Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" Graner's lawyer, Guy Womack, said in opening arguments to the 10-member US military jury at the reservist sergeant's court-martial.
Graner and Private Lynndie England, with whom he fathered a child and who is also facing a court-martial, became the faces of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal after they appeared in photographs that showed degraded, naked prisoners.
And this ....
Mr Womack said using a tether was a valid method of controlling detainees, especially those who might be soiled with faeces."You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he said.
"In Texas we'd lasso them and drag them out of there."
He compared the leash to parents who place tethers on their toddlers while walking in shopping malls.
What happened that caused them to be covered in shit in the first place?
I'm no lawyer, but surely this approach would antagonise the jury?
Apart from arguing that the methods were not illegal, Graner's defence is that he was following orders.
And that's the crux of it. If Graner and his cohorts were following orders, then it's their superiors who should be on trial, not them. Pity the defence council didn't solely concentrate on exploring that interesting possibility.
