Last month, a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was filed on behalf of former Airborne Ranger 1st Lt. Michael Behenna. Behenna has been locked up in Leavenworth since 2009. He’s serving a sentence of 25 years (he’s eligible for parole after 15) in the homicide of Ali Mansur Mohamed in Iraq in 2008. This ruling, said Behenna’s lawyers, will decide whether service-members will have the same right to self-defense in a combat zone that police officers have every day on duty. • Service-members who overstep their authority instantly become defenseless targets for deadly enemy attacks.
• If they draw their firearms first, they could lose all right to self-defense “as a matter of law.”
• If they wait for the enemy to attack before drawing their weapons, they could lose their lives.
• Neither “basic concepts of criminal law” nor common sense requires service-members to make that Hobbesian choice.
Dr. Herbert MacDonell is a forensic scientist that testified at Behenna’s court-martial as a prosecution witness. He told prosecuting attorneys during that court-martial that in his estimation, Mansour was reaching for Behenna’s gun when Behenna shot the suspected terrorist. Here’s how Dr. MacDonell explained it in an interview with the Washington Times.
I believe his (Behenna’s) testimony fits the known physical facts. If Ali Mansur was standing and reaching for Behenna’s gun and was, at that moment shot, it would explain the horizontal trajectory of Ali Mansur’s chest wound. If he dropped straight down and was shot in the head as his head passed in front of the muzzle of Behenna’s gun that would be consistent with the horizontal trajectory of the head shot and the near parallel trajectories of both shots.
The US government has yet to respond to this latest petition. If the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t take on the case, all that Behenna could hope for is a presidential pardon. If not, he’ll be forty years old before he leaves prison.