Fort Hood Shooter Faces Charges, None for Killing Soldier's Baby

[juliee]

Fort Hood, TX – Army officials have filed more charges against Nidal Malik Hasan, who stands accused of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian in last month’s shooting. However, the charges do not include any for killing soldier Francheska Velez’s unborn child, despite requests from pro-life groups.

LifeNews.com/state4620.html

 

[Poetess_Kera]

The lack of respect for the unborn in society is appalling.

 

[DOShea]

This topic has come up twice before and continues to argue a point from ingnorance.

The military cannot charge Hasan for murder of an unborn. Prior to the Bush Presidency, the Uniform Code of Military Justice contained nothing in it that defines an unborn baby as a human life, therefore no murder charges were possible. During Bush’s term, he added language to the UCMJ by use of an Executive Order, language that specifically allowed the taking of the life of an unborn child to be charged as murder or manslaughter as appropriate.

When President Obama took office, one of his first acts was to order all previous Executive Orders null and void with exception of a few, and this was not one of them. So the military justice system is right back where they were - with no law under which to charge for the murder of any unborn.

So we might as well ask why he is not charged with felonious chewing of bubble gum. No law against it.

 

[DOShea]

Just to clarify the above - the article references the Defense of the Unborn Act of 2004 and makes it sound like it added murder of the unborn to the UCMJ. It did not. It added manslaughter of the unborn to the UCMJ, and as such does not carry a death penalty.

What Bush’s Executive Order did was add the same basic language that is in Article 119a of the UCMJ (Manslaughter) into Article 118 (Murder). Now that the Executive Order is void, the military can only charge with manslaughter.

So why don’t they?

Why should they? They already have multiple capital murder counts to prosecute. Why would they want to open up an avenue that is not well tested in the military courts and give the defendant a basis for years and years of appeal? Likely they don’t want to have to test the court’s view of a manslaughter charge sticking in the case of a shooter who fired at random. That would use a lot of other resources that could be better used to prosecute the other murder charges where the issue is much more clear cut.

With the charges already facing him, a charge of manslaughter at this point would mean no more time or severity in sentencing. He already faces the death penalty or life in prison for each of the other charges, one more won’t matter.

 

[gamewell45]

Fort Hood, TX – Army officials have filed more charges against Nidal Malik Hasan, who stands accused of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian in last month’s shooting. However, the charges do not include any for killing soldier Francheska Velez’s unborn child, despite requests from pro-life groups.

LifeNews.com/state4620.html

Lets suppose the government finds him guilty and gives him 12 separate death sentences; all they can do is execute him once. Its not like they can put him before the firing squad 12 separate times. Either way, he will have answered for everyone he killed once they put him to death.

 

[Trunicate09]

That’s a shame. Not even considering to take in account that one individual who was at their most defenseless - the unborn child.