What's Called "Mutiny" in the U.S. Army
Strand, Carl J.
TWENTY-SEVEN YOUNG SOLDIERS have been standing trial for "mutiny" allegedly committed in the Presidio, an army installation in San Francisco. The issues raised by this trial extend far...
...It is clear that the way the trials were conducted and the severity of the sentences violate these fundamental concepts...
...The question is: should military courts be allowed to commit such tragic injustices, should they wreck young lives in retaliation for such pitifully small, such gentle acts...
...Never before have we had such a large "peacetime" army...
...Calif...
...Since the men were prisoners they could not be considered under arms...
...Trials for the next five prisoners were moved to Fort Lewis, Washington, where they too have been found guilty...
...It is a beautiful spot, noted for its Officers' Club, golf course, winding drives, and cypress trees...
...or any other army will find all this quite believable...
...The fourth trial was moved by the prosecution to the Mojave Desert to escape the mounting demonstrations...
...Prisoners complain that certain guards have a habit of chambering a shell in their shotguns while daring prisoners to escape...
...TWENTY-SEVEN YOUNG SOLDIERS have been standing trial for "mutiny" allegedly committed in the Presidio, an army installation in San Francisco...
...Part lies in the nature of recent protest activity...
...Punishing soldiers for the exercise of what would be regarded as ordinary civil rights in the society is not new...
...It was supposedly during one of these latter exercises that a nineteen-year-old prisoner, Pvt...
...But repression has bred more, not less, dissent...
...WESTERN SOCIETY has developed certain con cepts and rules concerning the administration of justice...
...The military seems to have dis regarded its own precedents in trying these men...
...Richard Bunch, was killed...
...The stockade is extremely crowded, the fog-chill from the nearby Golden Gate is often bitterly cold, and what passes for food would constitute an insult to a Berkshire hog...
...More important, there is a serious need for a more searching examination of the nature of civil rights in the military...
...For the trials were held not to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendants...
...Congressman Jeffrey Cohelan (D...
...Senator Alan Cranston (D...
...After the killing, on October 14, 27 prisoners formed a circle, sat down, and sang protest songs for two hours...
...and the extreme severity of the sentences...
...Since Haight-Ashbury, the graveyard of the Love Generation, is still a Mecca for very young soldiers gone AWOL, the stockade population tends to run to men charged with going AWOL...
...In re ducing the sentences, the Defense Department has tacitly admitted not merely that sixteen years for singing is an unjustified punishment but that the whole charge of mutiny was un warranted...
...the right to free speech of every per son in this society...
...Most have been imprisoned for desertion, and almost all had previously been classified by the army as psychologically unfit for duty...
...they can only justly be charged with disobeying an order...
...The guards have a reputation for brutality...
...One concept is that a trial judge should be impartial...
...Obviously, there must be a reform of the system of military justice...
...What is new is the scope of the problem...
...This trial resulted in four years for the fourth defendant...
...and others supported the prisoners' claims that stockade conditions were bad enough to justify the kind of demonstration that took place...
...Calif...
...As the protests mounted, so did the sentences, up to sixteen years for the second, and fourteen for the third man tried...
...The Presidio, headquarters of the U.S...
...The spectacle of en listed men protesting in a peaceful manner outraged some authoritarian minds dominating the Army and prompted the court to make "examples" of the Presidio 27, with the hope that further organizing along this line would be headed off...
...The issues raised by this trial extend far beyond the immediate events...
...Yet all were charged by the army with mutiny, despite the fact that an Army court-martial investigator recommended that the charge be reduced to "willfully disobeying an order...
...There is no place within this structure for democratic dissent...
...Sixth Army, sits on the Northern tip of San Francis within a bazooka's shot of the Golden Gate Bridge...
...Nesrey Sood, the first prisoner to be tried, received fifteen years at hard labor...
...This charge carries the much smaller sentence of six months...
...Another is that a defendant can be tried only for a specific charge, not for beliefs or political connections with persons outside the courtroom...
...All but one are from small-town backgrounds and have no record of previous protest...
...But the difference between the sentences handed out to those tried at the Presidio, and the one prisoner tried outside the range of the demonstrators, indicates that these external activities strongly prejudiced the judges against the defendants...
...demanded an investigation of military prisons...
...These extend, or should extend, to everyone...
...During the sing-in, they refused to obey a direct order to disperse...
...The basic structure of an army, and the manner in which authority is exercised within it, has remained largely unchanged for 500 years...
...The military does COMMENTS AND OPINIONS not want to see an alliance between young enlisted men and leftist campus groups...
...Anyone who knows the U.S...
...One had a history of suicide attempts...
...Why did it occur...
...their average educational level, tenth grade...
...They were used by the army for political purposes...
...Unlike civil judges, military ones are not expected to maintain a totally detached attitude toward the case they are trying...
...The defendants were used as "examples" to others...
...The question is not whether such an alliance should be forged...
...The average age of the singers was nineteen...
...The defense of the men has been under 198 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS taken by several civil libertarian and pacifist groups...
...An apparent result of all this outside support was that Pvt...
...The main arguments used by the defense have rested on •the inappropriateness of the charge...
...Never before have the youths entering it been so aware of the faults besetting the society they are sworn to defend...
...Although Article 94 of the Military Code defines mutiny as "conspiring to override law ful military authority," it is generally inter preted as the refusal of men under arms to carry out an order...
...The domestic protest over the Vietnam War is viewed by a seg ment of the officer class as responsible for un dermining the war effort...
...It also contains a stockade...
...Part of the reason for this lies in the rigid structure of the Army...
...A change of venue, requested by the defense, had been denied...
...How long can such an authoritarian institution continue to exist unchanged in this society...
...As of this writing, the Defense Department has begun reducing the harsher sentences to two years at hard labor and dishonorable dis charge...
...They have publicized the case, demonstrated at the Presidio, and raised money for civilian lawyers...
...By early March, pressure for leniency was building up both in Bay area papers and in Congress...
...But most important of all, our society must deal with the new phenomenon of a large standing army...
...In suppressing young protesters, the Army is denying basic values of the larger society...
...Soldiers' protests, mainly confined to leaf letting, are increasing at the Presidio...
Vol. 16 • May 1969 • No. 3
