Jury Recommends No Extra Prison For Plymouth Marine Who Killed Iraqi Civilian

A military jury ruled Thursday that a Marine sergeant twice convicted of murdering an Iraqi civilian get no additional prison time beyond the roughly seven years he has already served for the crime.

The decision came just a day after the same jury convicted Lawrence Hutchins III, 31, of unpremeditated murder in the 2006 killing in Hamdania, Iraq, and brought an overnight emotional swing for Hutchins and his family.

"Right now, I think they are ecstatic, because he's going home," defense attorney Christopher Oprison said. "Him going home is all that matters. We got a sentence we can live with."

Oprison said Hutchins' 11-year-old daughter had "a tremendous impact" on jurors. Kylie Hutchins told them she lived seven years of "sheer terror" without her father around and said she wanted better for her two younger siblings.

"They don't deserve what I have. They deserve better, and they always will," she said.

The recommendation isn't the final word - the trial's convening authority, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., can accept or reduce the sentence in the coming weeks.

Under military law, unpremeditated murder is a lesser charge than premeditated murder.

The jurors also recommended Hutchins get a bad-conduct discharge, which is less serious than a dishonorable discharge, and that his rank be reduced to private.

Hutchins had appealed to the jurors to spare him earlier Thursday, saying that he had "ice in my veins" during the thick of war and that he now regrets what he did.

He spoke haltingly at times and wiped his arms over his eyes during a long, emotional account of his 2006 killing of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a 52-year-old, disabled Iraqi policeman in the village of Hamdania.

"If I could go back and do it all over again, I would not have done this," Hutchins told jurors one day after he was convicted a second time in one of the military's longest-running war-crime cases.

The lead prosecutor, Marine Maj. Adam Workman, told jurors the conviction was "not about questioning a Marine's decision in the heat of battle. ... This is about the wholesale abandonment of moral prowess."

"This is not about killing. This is about murder," Workman said.

Another Hutchins attorney, Marine Capt. E.J. Skoczenski acknowledged his client made a "terrible, terrible decision," but said "he's paid his debt to society, he's been rehabilitated, there's no need for any additional punishment."

Hutchins, of Plymouth, thought he had already won his freedom after two military courts threw out his murder conviction in a 2007 trial because of legal errors, but the Navy was allowed to retry the case.

The former squad leader told the jury of three enlisted men and three officers Thursday that he acted illegally and made "the wrong choice." He said he hoped the person he killed would be proud of the man he has become.

Giving unsworn testimony under gentle questioning by one of his attorneys, Hutchins recalled an atmosphere of frustration and steely determination to gain an upper hand in Hamdania in 2006. Shortly before the killing, a local rebel leader was freed by U.S. forces and word filtered to Hutchins that the rebel was taunting the Marines.

"I was a different person. I had ice in my veins. I cannot stress that enough," said Hutchins, who followed his father and grandfather into the Marines the day after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks in 2001, when he was a high school senior.

Prosecutors said Hutchins and his squad planted a stolen AK-47 and shovel near the victim to make him appear to have been an insurgent. They say Hutchins bragged to his squad mates about how they got away with murder.

The defense argued the military inquiry was shoddy and didn't support allegations that Hutchins and his squad set out to kill Awad because he was an Iraqi man.

All but one squad mate refused to testify at his retrial. Many have said they don't stand behind 2006 statements they gave to military interrogators. Some said then that the man was marched from his home and bound with zip ties before being fatally shot.

The six other Marines and a Navy corpsman in the squad served less than 18 months, and Hutchins has been in and out of the brig because of the rulings.

---

Associated Press writer Julie Watson contributed to this report.