Fort Campbell, Ky. – A Fort Campbell soldier accused of acting as a lookout while his colleagues attacked and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family last year pleaded guilty to some lesser offenses Monday as his court-martial began on rape and murder charges.
Pfc. Jesse Spielman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice, arson, wrongfully touching a corpse and drinking.
He still faces trial on the more serious charges in the March 2006 rape and killing of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and the death of her family. Under military law, a soldier present when a crime occurs can be found guilty if prosecutors can establish that the soldier had prior knowledge of the offense.
Three other soldiers have pleaded guilty for their roles in the crimes and received sentences ranging from five to 100 years.
Another soldier was discharged from the military before he was charged and could face the death penalty if found guilty in federal court in Kentucky.
Defense attorney Craig Carlson said Spielman’s plea to the lesser charges was part of an agreement with prosecutors that involved crimes that Spielman had already confessed to committing during interviews with military investigators.
A military judge later in the day began seating a jury for his court-martial on the rape and murder charges.
LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.
Gore’s son pleads guilty in drug case
Albert Gore III, the son of former Vice President Al Gore, pleaded guilty Monday in Orange County Superior Court to unlawful possession of prescription drugs and marijuana and was allowed to enter a drug diversion program.
If Gore successfully completes a 90-day residential drug program, his convictions will be stricken from his record.
Defense attorney Al Stokke said Gore, 24, received no more or no less than anybody else charged with similar crimes.
The charges stem from a late- night arrest July 4 when California Highway Patrol officers spotted Gore traveling in excess of 100 mph on the San Diego Freeway in a Toyota Prius. A search of the car revealed that he had, without a prescription, Adderall, Vicodin, Xanax and Valium, and they also found less than an ounce of marijuana.
LOS ANGELES
Surgeon charged in organ harvest case
A surgeon was charged Monday with prescribing excessive drugs to a disabled patient to hasten his death and harvest his organs for transplantation.
Prosecutors in San Luis Obispo County said Dr. Hootan Rooz rokh, 33, of San Francisco, gave a harmful drug and prescribed excessive doses of morphine and an anti-anxiety drug to 26-year-old Ruben Navarro, who was born with a metabolic disorder.
In 2006, Navarro was hospitalized in a coma after respiratory and cardiac arrest. Although he was found to have irreversible brain damage, he was not considered brain dead because he still had limited brain function.
The day before Navarro died, his family gave approval for a surgical team to recover his organs for donation. No organs were recovered because he did not die within 30 minutes after being removed from life support.
SAN FRANCISCO
Pained prose grabs prize for Wis. writer
A Wisconsin man won an annual contest Monday that salutes bad writing.
Jim Gleeson, 47, of Madison, Wis., beat out thousands of other prose manglers in San Jose State University’s 2007 Bulwer- Lytton Fiction Contest with this convoluted opening to a nonexistent novel: “Gerald began – but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them ‘permanently’ meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash – to pee,” Gleeson wrote.
Scott Rice, an English professor at San Jose State, called Gleeson’s entry a “syntactic atrocity.” Rice has organized the contest since founding it in 1982.
CANARY ISLANDS
Blaze in Spain forces 2,000 to evacuate
A raging forest fire has destroyed thousands of acres of woodland on Spain’s Gran Canaria island and forced the evacuation Monday of more than 2,000 people, authorities said.
Police arrested a 37-year-old forest ranger Saturday, saying he acknowledged starting the fire because his job contract was about to expire.
