Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Fayetteville (NC) Observer
October 24, 2008
By Paul Woolverton, Staff writer
Prosecution witnesses testified Thursday of escalating tension in 2005 between Army Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez and Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, one of two officers that Martinez is accused of killing in Iraq.
Some witnesses described the initial confusion and early stages of the investigation into the 2005 explosion that killed Esposito and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen at Forward Operating Base Danger in Tikrit, Iraq.
Martinez, 41, could be sentenced to death if convicted of the two murder charges. He is being court-martialed at Fort Bragg.
He was stationed in Iraq along with Esposito and Allen as part of the 42nd Infantry Division of the New York National Guard.
When Martinez became the supply sergeant for his National Guard unit in Troy, N.Y., in 2004, the unit was slow-paced and had decades-old equipment, said Command Sgt. Maj. Richard Fearnside, who worked with Martinez there.
When the unit was picked to go to Iraq and moved about 175 miles to Fort Drum, N.Y., to prepare, Martinez became responsible for millions of dollars worth of equipment. Soldiers needed to get trained on the gear and Martinez had to issue it and keep track of it, he said.
So much was coming so fast, that “it’s sort of like drinking out of a firehose,” he said.
Maj. David Palmer, another Guardsman, said Martinez worked hard and was good giving out the equipment, but bad at keeping track of it. “This created friction,” Palmer said.
Esposito struggled to get Martinez to keep up with the paperwork, which created problems, Palmer said. Expensive equipment began to get lost or unaccounted for, he said.
The problems continued when the unit went overseas to Kuwait and Iraq, Palmer said. Esposito preferred to try to help troubled soldiers such as Martinez improve, Palmer said, but in May 2005, “he had made the decision that it wasn’t going to be fixed, that he needed to be moved.”
This touches on a motive prosecutors said in their opening statements to the jury Wednesday: Martinez killed Esposito because he thought Esposito was going to get him kicked out of the military.
About 10 p.m. on June 7, 2005, an antipersonnel mine was set off into the window of Esposito’s office. It killed him and Allen.
The soldiers on the base at first assumed it was a mortar or rocket attack. Several testified Iraq insurgents typically attacked the base with mortars and rockets several times a week.
Col. Robert Crow, now with the Texas National Guard, in 2005 was responsible for protecting the base. He said he and his team quickly went to the site of the explosion. In addition to the initial blast, there were three quieter explosions shortly after, which investigators say were caused by grenades.
Crow said his team gave first aid to Esposito, who was unconscious and losing blood, and to Allen, who was conscious and cried out from the pain. Despite the force of the explosion, a picture of Esposito’s daughter, Madeline, then less than 2 years old, still stood in a frame on his desk.
In examining the blast scene that night with flashlights, some things looked strange, Crow said: A metal window grate had been knocked away from the window instead of into the building, and there were ball bearings. He had never seen ball bearings in an insurgent’s mortar, rocket or rocket-propelled grenade, he said, and neither had base intelligence personnel who kept records of the weapons the enemy had used before.
The next morning, Crow said, he examined the office again and concluded it had been hit with a claymore mine. A claymore is an anti-personnel weapon, a bomb loaded with ball bearings. In typical use, a soldier places the mine and waits nearby, holding a switch, attached to the mine by wire, to set it off. When the enemy comes by, the soldier detonates the mine.
Earlier Thursday, Esposito and Allen’s widows, Siobhan Esposito and Barbara Allen, testified briefly.
Siobhan Esposito said she last saw Capt. Esposito alive on New Year’s weekend 2005. She had never heard of Martinez until after her husband was killed. “My husband never talked about his work when he was in Iraq,” she said.
A prosecutor asked whether Martinez has tried to communicate with her, and the defense objected to the question.
The judge, Col. Steve Henley, sent the jury out of the courtroom, and Siobhan Esposito answered the question: “Occasionally he makes eye contact with me, and it is with contempt.”
Henley sustained the objection, so the jury never heard that statement.
Barbara Allen testified she last saw Louis Allen in person over Memorial Day weekend 2005. She and their children last saw him, she said, over a video link he set up through the Internet about 10 hours before he was killed.
After testimony ended Thursday afternoon, the prosecutors and defense lawyers continued an ongoing tussle over access to witnesses and evidence.
Maj. John Gregory, one of the defense lawyers, complained the prosecution team would not tell him who upcoming witnesses are or where to find them, making it impossible for the defense team to attempt to talk to them before the trial.
Henley said all witnesses must be available to the lawyers two days in advance, but they don’t have to speak to the lawyers if they don’t want to do so. And he gave the lawyers a warning: If any lawyer interferes with a witness, “the court will consider removing you from the case.”
“Both sides need to stand back and ask themselves whether their conduct and behavior so far is appropriate, and, if not, should it be changed,” Henley said.
The case continues at 8:30 a.m. today at Fort Bragg.
October 24, 2008
By Paul Woolverton, Staff writer
Prosecution witnesses testified Thursday of escalating tension in 2005 between Army Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez and Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, one of two officers that Martinez is accused of killing in Iraq.
Some witnesses described the initial confusion and early stages of the investigation into the 2005 explosion that killed Esposito and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen at Forward Operating Base Danger in Tikrit, Iraq.
Martinez, 41, could be sentenced to death if convicted of the two murder charges. He is being court-martialed at Fort Bragg.
He was stationed in Iraq along with Esposito and Allen as part of the 42nd Infantry Division of the New York National Guard.
When Martinez became the supply sergeant for his National Guard unit in Troy, N.Y., in 2004, the unit was slow-paced and had decades-old equipment, said Command Sgt. Maj. Richard Fearnside, who worked with Martinez there.
When the unit was picked to go to Iraq and moved about 175 miles to Fort Drum, N.Y., to prepare, Martinez became responsible for millions of dollars worth of equipment. Soldiers needed to get trained on the gear and Martinez had to issue it and keep track of it, he said.
So much was coming so fast, that “it’s sort of like drinking out of a firehose,” he said.
Maj. David Palmer, another Guardsman, said Martinez worked hard and was good giving out the equipment, but bad at keeping track of it. “This created friction,” Palmer said.
Esposito struggled to get Martinez to keep up with the paperwork, which created problems, Palmer said. Expensive equipment began to get lost or unaccounted for, he said.
The problems continued when the unit went overseas to Kuwait and Iraq, Palmer said. Esposito preferred to try to help troubled soldiers such as Martinez improve, Palmer said, but in May 2005, “he had made the decision that it wasn’t going to be fixed, that he needed to be moved.”
This touches on a motive prosecutors said in their opening statements to the jury Wednesday: Martinez killed Esposito because he thought Esposito was going to get him kicked out of the military.
About 10 p.m. on June 7, 2005, an antipersonnel mine was set off into the window of Esposito’s office. It killed him and Allen.
The soldiers on the base at first assumed it was a mortar or rocket attack. Several testified Iraq insurgents typically attacked the base with mortars and rockets several times a week.
Col. Robert Crow, now with the Texas National Guard, in 2005 was responsible for protecting the base. He said he and his team quickly went to the site of the explosion. In addition to the initial blast, there were three quieter explosions shortly after, which investigators say were caused by grenades.
Crow said his team gave first aid to Esposito, who was unconscious and losing blood, and to Allen, who was conscious and cried out from the pain. Despite the force of the explosion, a picture of Esposito’s daughter, Madeline, then less than 2 years old, still stood in a frame on his desk.
In examining the blast scene that night with flashlights, some things looked strange, Crow said: A metal window grate had been knocked away from the window instead of into the building, and there were ball bearings. He had never seen ball bearings in an insurgent’s mortar, rocket or rocket-propelled grenade, he said, and neither had base intelligence personnel who kept records of the weapons the enemy had used before.
The next morning, Crow said, he examined the office again and concluded it had been hit with a claymore mine. A claymore is an anti-personnel weapon, a bomb loaded with ball bearings. In typical use, a soldier places the mine and waits nearby, holding a switch, attached to the mine by wire, to set it off. When the enemy comes by, the soldier detonates the mine.
Earlier Thursday, Esposito and Allen’s widows, Siobhan Esposito and Barbara Allen, testified briefly.
Siobhan Esposito said she last saw Capt. Esposito alive on New Year’s weekend 2005. She had never heard of Martinez until after her husband was killed. “My husband never talked about his work when he was in Iraq,” she said.
A prosecutor asked whether Martinez has tried to communicate with her, and the defense objected to the question.
The judge, Col. Steve Henley, sent the jury out of the courtroom, and Siobhan Esposito answered the question: “Occasionally he makes eye contact with me, and it is with contempt.”
Henley sustained the objection, so the jury never heard that statement.
Barbara Allen testified she last saw Louis Allen in person over Memorial Day weekend 2005. She and their children last saw him, she said, over a video link he set up through the Internet about 10 hours before he was killed.
After testimony ended Thursday afternoon, the prosecutors and defense lawyers continued an ongoing tussle over access to witnesses and evidence.
Maj. John Gregory, one of the defense lawyers, complained the prosecution team would not tell him who upcoming witnesses are or where to find them, making it impossible for the defense team to attempt to talk to them before the trial.
Henley said all witnesses must be available to the lawyers two days in advance, but they don’t have to speak to the lawyers if they don’t want to do so. And he gave the lawyers a warning: If any lawyer interferes with a witness, “the court will consider removing you from the case.”
“Both sides need to stand back and ask themselves whether their conduct and behavior so far is appropriate, and, if not, should it be changed,” Henley said.
The case continues at 8:30 a.m. today at Fort Bragg.