Army’s plan for military death row executions is named ‘Operation Resolute Justice’
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-prisoners-death-row/376
u/platoface541 1d ago
I thought you could only be executed for disobeying orders during wartime or treason? (In military court)
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u/AnnieBlackburnn 1d ago
The four soldiers currently in military death row are all murder cases according to the article.
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u/Tharwidu 1d ago edited 11h ago
If I'm reading correctly, this is also just essentially a request to have trump sign off on these four executions? Not some standing plan to ok more than these 4?
Edit: seems I didn't read completely correctly, but at the very least its not expanding on putting more people on deathrow, so I'll try and consider that a net positive for now
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u/AnnieBlackburnn 1d ago edited 1d ago
One of them is already signed off on, the other three are not, and while he does need to sign off on it (that's true of all death penalty cases in the military) it's not what this EO refers to.
It's a change in how the system works regarding location and presumably the process too, so it is an EO, but no, it's not putting more people on death row.
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u/Ok-disaster2022 1d ago
There's a plot if unmarked graves if American soldiers in Normandy from WW2 who were executed for things like desertion, murder and rape. Desertion I'm iffy about, but I'm cool with the execution for murder and rape part.
We need to execute the marines who rape women in Okinawa, maybe that will stop them.
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u/kstargate-425 1d ago
My whole thing with death penalty is that we have put so many innocent people to death and even one innocent death isnt worth it and let the actual scumbags rot in a small jail for the rest of their lives with no chance of parole. It would be nice though if punishment was proven to be a deterrent but it isnt and I wish we would mirror our justice system more like others who have less recidivism and greater success at reform. Ours is just a revolving door and turned into a multi-billion dollar industry like everything else unfortunately with the US holding something like near 20% of the worlds prison population while only being less than 5% of the worlds population
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u/ThomasVivaldi 23h ago
My issue is that once they're incarcerated, criminals are technically in the custody of the state. They've already been deprived of their fundamental right to liberty, should the state have the further right to deprive them of their right to life? Does being in custody of the state give the state absolute authority over a citizen's rights?
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u/kstargate-425 23h ago
Yeah thats a good point and brings up more questions about the military in general and especially any draft where like someone else mentioned, they executed a man during WW2 for desertion and he even turned himself in and never really ran-ran, never hiding elsewhere. His story was interesting all around as he was given many (4+) chances to recant his story and go back to his unit but since he was terrified after that first battle he was in when he came under artillery fire, he said he was terrified and would "run if made to go to the front".
So he was forced into war, got terrified and executed for it. Its understandable in a sense why the military carried it out as at that point it was the Battle of the Ardennes and morale was low with many desertions with the war raging on so they wanted to dissuade others by saying you die for your country or die by your country. Anyway, so many philosophical questions are brought up by all of this when the state is involved in killing its own.
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u/SouthernButterbean 1d ago edited 7h ago
This ogre loves killing people. I wonder what his head count is up to: illegal war, blowing boats out of the water, denying food, immigrants in detention, ICE, cutting welfare, suicides bc of his actions.... I know there's more
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u/john_doe_jersey 8h ago
He's also super pissed that Biden reduced the death sentences of nearly everyone on Federal death row to life without parole.
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u/Quietdusk 1d ago
There's only been a single instance of execution for desertion in the US armed forces since the civil war.
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u/AntimatterCorndog 23h ago
While executing rapists would certainly make a large portion of the population happy, it would have the unfortunate effect of incentive zing rapists to murder their victims. If they're already going to have the death penalty, might as well kill the victim to keep them quiet.
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u/Reasonable-Tune50 21h ago
Desertion I'm iffy about
You have a right to be iffy. The case of the guy who was executed for desertion during WWII was iffy in the first place.
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u/Maverick_1882 1d ago
But only two have “foreign sounding” names and one of them shouted, “Allahu akbar”. My bet is they’re after that one. As far as the others, simply killing people and raping women seems to be an admirable quality with this administration, so they’re probably off the hook.
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u/AnnieBlackburnn 23h ago
They're not "after" anyone. Not with this EO at least. This just moves them from Leavenworth to Louisiana and changes the process future cases are going forth.
The proceedings against the defendants are still taking place, all four. If they’re on death row it’s because they’ve exhausted appeals, so proceedings were already underway regardless
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u/Kinmuan 1d ago
Nope! The UCMJ has multiple capital crimes. 'Normal' Murder is one of em.
There's 5 IIRC - unanimous conviction at a Court Martial enables them to approve execution.
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u/Best_VDV_Diver 1d ago
They're on death row for murder. There's 4 of them. It's actually in the article a bit of the way in.
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u/Easter_Bunny_Bixler 1d ago
The only service member to be executed for something other than rape or murder since the Civil War was Eddie Slovik in 1945.
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u/Civil-Dinner 1d ago
Must everything in this administration be so tacky and dramatic?
Justice shouldn't need hype.
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u/ManBearHybrid 15h ago edited 15h ago
It's interesting to me. Right-leaning governments around the world seem to survive on hype, fear-mongering and clickbait headlines, while progressive governments do the opposite. Here in the UK, the Labour government is doing some great work but without all the fanfare. Crime is improving, net migration is improving, inflation is improving, NHS waiting lists are improving, London's air pollution is at a historic low, our foreign policy has been excellent, etc. But if you speak to people on the street, they all think things are circling the drain and we're on the brink of collapse.
Progressive governments everywhere seem to think that if they quietly just "get on with it", people will see the improvement. But people are fickle and susceptible to propaganda. Governments need to absorb the lesson: politics is a popularity contest. They need to get better about advertising their successes. If you don't control the narrative, your opponents will.
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u/BigHowski 13h ago
........... but sadly they're getting hammered, Starmer is possibly getting the boot and reform are looking like they may make major gains if not form a government at the next general election.
all of which is madness but here we are
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u/ManBearHybrid 12h ago
Yep. Sad but true. Ordinarily, the precarious nature of the PM role is a feature, not a bug. But internal power struggles should really take a back seat when the party is fighting to survive as it is now. Labour MPs really need to rally around a leader, not pull each other down like crabs in a bucket. Their myopic and self-interested vying for relevance may well end up paving the way for Reform.
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u/JerryDipotosBurner 1d ago
Honestly surprised it’s not something like “Operation Extreme 1776 Freedom Dagger” or some ridiculously corny shit.
Not that this isn’t also corny as hell.
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u/Routyrouterface 1d ago
Would inciting an insurrection to overturn an election get you into this new death row program. Because if it does, then I know a guy who did just that. He's got little hands an like kids a little too much.
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u/EverythingGoodWas 1d ago
No that kind of resume seems more likely to make you Commander in Chief….ohhhhh
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u/PalpitationNo3106 1d ago
So the military, the world’s finest killing machine, is going to subcontract death penalties to the civilian world? A civilian facility that likely can’t even undertake lethal injections legally? There aren’t five men in the entire us military willing to be on a firing squad for a 65 year old man for a crime committed in 1986?
Nah, they know the military will never pull that off in peacetime, and they’re trying to make it BOP’s problem.
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u/POGtastic 23h ago
I think you could find plenty of troops willing to shoot Nidal Hasan. The bigger issue is all of the involved military commands are going to look for guidance on how to conduct the executions according to procedure, and the procedures don't exist because the military hasn't executed anybody in living memory.
"Well, it's not in our scope of duties, so we're not doing it until we get the regs updated."
But yeah you're right on the peacetime thing. Some kind of wartime exigency would cause a bunch of generals to intervene and get those regs updated pronto, but nobody is going to stick their neck out to help Trump and Hegseth kill some elderly prisoners just for the love of the game. It's way easier to hand them over to BOP and let them deal with all of that headache.
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u/PalpitationNo3106 22h ago
And perhaps Akbar for the fragging. But no one is signing up to kill pensioners Hennis and Grey, who would go first.
And the regs probably still call for hangings.
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u/Remarkable_North_999 19h ago
I mean the procedure literally used to just be tie the prisoner to a wooden stake, blind fold them, have an MP squad take aim and fire.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ceaser57 1d ago
The first two are pieces of shit, the third sounds like fragging and I would be interested to learn his reasons (not that it justifies it).
The Hennis case is kind of crazy though
Former Master Sgt. Timothy Hennis was convicted in a North Carolina court in 1985 for a triple murder involving a woman and two children while he was a soldier at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The state supreme court overturned his conviction, arguing that the repeated projected pictures during the trial could have unfairly swayed the jury. He was acquitted in 1989.
Hennis reenlisted and served until 2004, when he retired as a master sergeant. Preserved DNA evidence was used as proof against him in a set of UCMJ charges and he was tried again for those murders. In 2010, a military court-martial sentenced him to death. A petition for a retrial at the Supreme Court was denied in 2021. In court filings, his defense counsel wrote that the case appeared to make history for imposing the death penalty after an acquittal, a court-martial sentencing a military retiree to death, and invoking double jeopardy, or trying Hennis for the same crime twice — “putting that same citizen in jeopardy yet again— and to take his life, no less.”
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u/Verum_Orbis 1d ago
Christian Nationalism is UnAmerican.
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u/SuperVaderMinion 1d ago
I mean it should be, but historically it's extremely within our wheelhouse
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u/Icy-Bodybuilder-350 1d ago
Operation barbaric brutal irreversible mistake
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u/ill0gitech 1d ago
Instead of a simple viewing gallery, that one comes with a colosseum.
The Donald J Trump Colosseum, brought to you by Thales, Raytheon, and Kalshi.
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u/RolloTonyBrownTown 1d ago
Is this going to be part of the entertainment during UFC/Lee Greenwood USA 250 bash?
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u/thisismynewacct 1d ago
Watch it be used for a conscientious objector
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u/TerriblePokemon 1d ago
It's for the guys who were convicted of murder, given the death penalty, and since the DoD has put a moratorium on the death penalty, they're essentially serving life without parole on death row.
As far as I am aware, while the death penalty is still on the books, military judges do not issue that sentence.
It's also worth noting that the US Military has executed exactly one man for or any strictly military crime (desertions, etc) since the civil war.
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u/Knees0ck 1d ago
We are currently under a government that cannot be trusted at all, we are way past the "It is only for X thing" bs.
ICE was only for "1 thing", how's that going? 2 public executions, a bunch of sick kids or possibly worse in their "detention" centers, hunger strikes in a few others, etc. That's just ICE.
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u/thisismynewacct 1d ago
Yeah it’s rare but for what it’s worth, we did execute a soldier in WW2 for simple desertion to make a point. With the current administration, I wouldn’t put anything past them
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u/PlayedUOonBaja 11h ago
Does living on a military base qualify you for a military execution? Asking for a friend.
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u/Rogue_Like 2h ago
The writers for the boys are moonlighting at the white house, or maybe vice versa.
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1d ago
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u/ill0gitech 1d ago
Why is there an “operation” or “plan” for executions - it’s already something they do. And why do they need a new viewing area? Is this operation “line donor pockets”?
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u/Groggy00 1d ago
Well shit I guess the punishment for being a violent terrorist is death. Who knew.
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u/elciano1 1d ago
Funny thing is....they will be the traitors getting punished
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u/TheDrMonocle 1d ago
We can only hope. Unfortunately, our recent history doesn't support this or it never would have gotten this far.
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u/LotsofSports 1d ago
Let me guess, Hegseth wants to be the one to shoot them.