SAN DIEGO — A Marine officer charged with failing to properly investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis heads to a Camp Pendleton courtroom Tuesday, the first hearing in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths in the Iraq war.

Capt. Randy W. Stone, 34, is one of four officers accused of failing to report and investigate the killings. All are charged with dereliction of duty; one also faces an orders violation, another is accused of making a false official statement and obstructing an investigation.

The Iraqis were killed in the hours following a roadside bomb that rocked a Marine patrol on the morning of Nov. 19, 2005. The blast killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, Texas, and injured two others.

In the aftermath, five Iraqi men were shot as they approached the scene in a taxi and others — including women and children — died as Marines went house to house in the area, clearing homes with grenades and gunfire.

Three enlisted Camp Pendleton-based Marines are charged with unpremediated murder. They deny any wrongdoing, saying that during a highly chaotic time they responded properly to a perceived threat.

Initially the Marines were praised for their actions. But when military officials looked more closely months later, they reversed course and brought charges. The squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, is charged with murdering 18 of the Iraqis.

The hearing for Stone, a military attorney from Dunkirk, Md., and others planned for his co-defendants will assess if the response by Wuterich and his men was justified, and will probe whether officers failed in their duties by not launching an investigation sooner.

Charles Gittins, the lawyer for Stone, said his client did nothing wrong because he reported the facts to his superiors as he understood them.

“They are saying that he should have nipped at people’s heels, telling them they need to investigate,” Gittins said. “Everything that my client knew, they knew.”

Former military prosecutor Tom Umberg said just because superior officers do not take action “that doesn’t absolve you of an obligation” to report a suspected law of war violation to military investigators.

David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who teaches the law of war, said high-ranking officers rely on their subordinates to feed them information and flag areas of concern.

“It is invalid of them to argue that they didn’t have an obligation to dig further unless a general officer told them to,” Glazier said of the accused officers.

At the Article 32 hearing, the military’s equivalent of a grand jury proceeding, an officer will listen to evidence and recommend whether charges should go to trial or not. Even if the enlisted Marines are absolved of murder, the officers still can be prosecuted for failing to properly investigate.

“If you have a suspicious circumstance, then you have a professional duty to ensure it was accurately reported,” Glazier said. “They could have breached those responsibilities even if ultimately the lower-ranking individuals are found not to have committed a crime.”

The day after the attack, a Marine public affairs officer wrote a press release saying 15 civilians and eight insurgents died, and that many were killed as a result of the bomb blast. Senior Marines signed off on the press release, but a Time magazine reporter who looked into the incident questioned that version of events in January 2006, starting a chain reaction that eventually led to an investigation.

The Army was called in to probe the Marines’ handling of the incident. The report by Army Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell said officers did not deliberately cover up the incident but it faulted the Marine chain of command for viewing civilian casualties, “even in significant numbers, as routine.”

Bargewell suggested Marines may not have adequately scrutinized the civilian deaths partly because of an “an attitude that portrayed noncombatants as not necessarily innocents, which may have fostered a willingness to accept reported circumstances that might otherwise appear dubious.”

One two-star Marine general told Bargewell that attacks in which many civilians died “happened all the time.” Defense attorneys for the officers say their clients did properly investigate the killings, but saw no need for a criminal probe because they understood the deaths to have occurred in a lawful “troops in contact” engagement.

Prosecutors have given at least eight other Marines immunity to testify. One, Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, initially was charged with the unpremeditated murder of five civilians, but prosecutors last month dropped those charges and plan to have Dela Cruz testify.

Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor and judge who teaches law of war at Georgetown University Law Center, said it is unusual to see so many witnesses given immunity. He called prosecutors “very cautious.”

“When you have 24 dead noncombatant bodies, you expect to see somebody going to trial, not somebody getting immunity,” Solis said.

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Marines charged in killings of Iraqi civilians in Haditha



Seven members of the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, are accused of crimes stemming from the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in November 2005. The charges and maximum sentences if convicted:

Officers:

• Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, 42, of Rangely, Colo.; battalion commander. Charged with violation of a lawful order and dereliction of duty for wrongfully and willfully failing to report and investigate alleged war crimes. Faces possible dismissal and up to two years’ imprisonment.

• Capt. Randy W. Stone, 34, of Dunkirk, Md.; military attorney. Charged with violation of a lawful order and dereliction of duty for failing to ensure that alleged violations of war were accurately reported and investigated. Faces possible dismissal and up to two years’ imprisonment.

• Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, 31, of Napa; company commander. Charged with dereliction of duty for failing to ensure that alleged violations of laws of war were investigated. Faces possible dismissal and up to six months’ imprisonment.

• 1st Lt. Andrew A. Grayson, 25, of Springboro, Ohio; intelligence officer. Charged with dereliction of duty for failing to ensure that alleged violations of war were accurately reported and investigated, making a false official statement and obstruction of justice. Faces possible dismissal and up to five years’ imprisonment.

Enlisted men:

• Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, of Meriden, Conn.; squad leader. Charged with unpremeditated murder of 18 people, including six in a house cleared by member of his squad. Also charged with making a false official statement and soliciting a Marine to make false official statements. Faces possible life sentence and dishonorable discharge.

• Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, 22, of Canonsburg, Pa.; rifleman. Charged with unpremeditated murder of three Iraqi civilians. Faces possible life sentence and dishonorable discharge.

• Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, 25, of Edmond, Okla.; rifleman. Charged with unpremeditated murder of two Iraqis, negligent homicide in deaths of four other Iraqis and assaulting two Iraqis. Faces possible life sentence and dishonorable discharge.

• Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, 24, of Chicago; rifleman. Initially charged with the unpremeditated murder of five civilians and making a false official statement. Prosecutors withdrew charges in April.