JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 24 years in prison Wednesday after saying “the plan was to kill people” in a conspiracy with four fellow soldiers to kill unarmed Afghan civilians.
Military judge Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks said he initially intended to sentence Spec. Jeremy Morlock to life in prison with possibility of parole but was bound by the plea deal. Morlock will get 352 days off his sentence for time served.
His sentencing came after he pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and one count each of conspiracy, obstructing justice and illegal drug use at his court-martial at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle.
The 22-year-old soldier is a key figure in a war-crimes probe that implicates a dozen members of his platoon and has raised some of the most serious criminal allegations to come from the war in Afghanistan.
He was accused of taking a lead role in the killings of three unarmed Afghan men in Kandahar province in January, February and May 2010.
Asked by the judge whether the plan was to shoot at people to scare them or to shoot to kill, Morlock replied, “The plan was to kill people.”
Morlock’s mother, Audrey, told the judge that her son had a happy childhood that was full of love but that he changed after the death of his father, a retired Army paratrooper killed in a 2007 boating accident. She expressed disbelief when asked about the crimes her son had admitted to.
“I don’t know what happened to him, but we love him,” she said in her brief, tearful testimony.
Morlock was the first of five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade to be court-martialed — something his lawyer Geoffrey Nathan characterized as an advantage. Under the plea deal, Morlock agreed to testify against his co-defendants.
“The first up gets the best deal,” Nathan said by phone Tuesday, noting that under the maximum sentence, Morlock would serve no more than eight years before becoming eligible for parole.
Morlock told the judge that he and the other soldiers first began plotting to murder unarmed Afghans in late 2009, several weeks before the first killing took place. To make the killings appear justified, the soldiers planned to plant weapons near the bodies of the victims, he said.
Morlock’s lawyers previously indicated they would argue that a lack of leadership in the unit contributed to the killings.
“There was a lack of supervision, a lack of command control; the environment was terrible,” Nathan said Tuesday. “In his mind, he had no choice.”
During questioning by the judge Wednesday, Morlock said he had second thoughts about the murder plot while home on leave in March 2010, after the first two killings had occurred.
“It was really hard to come back,” he told Hawks, adding that he no longer wanted to “engage or be part of anything” like the killings that already had taken place.
Morlock said he didn’t voice his doubts to his fellow soldiers, however, and he went on to participate in the third killing in May.
Morlock also admitted to smoking hashish while stationed in Afghanistan, although he said he was not under the influence of the drug at the time of the killings. In addition, he admitted to being one of six soldiers who assaulted a fellow platoon member after that man reported the drug use going on in the platoon.
