FORT HOOD, Texas, 6 February 2005 — Sgt. Javal Davis doesn’t have to serve much prison time for abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003, but once his incarceration is over, so is his prized career as a soldier.
A nine-man Army jury on Friday sentenced Davis to six months in a military prison, reduction in rank to private and a bad-conduct discharge.
The jurors deliberated more than five hours to arrive at their punishment for Davis, a former Abu Ghraib guard who admitted stepping on the hands and feet of handcuffed detainees and falling with his full weight on top of them.
After the verdict was read, Davis’ mother, Michelle Carpenter, sobbed uncontrollably in the courtroom. Davis gave his father, Jonathan, a long hug while a tear rolled down Davis’ face.
“All of you who aren’t my family can leave now,” Davis snapped at spectators after Col. James Pohl, the judge, and the jury left the courtroom.
Davis has already been credited with a month served, and his prison term could be reduced another three weeks for good conduct behind bars, said Capt. Chuck Neill, a spokesman for prosecutors.
The sentence is among the lightest for any soldier convicted in the Abu Ghraib scandal, which ignited last spring when graphic photographs were made public. Last month Pvt. Charles Graner, called the abuse ringleader, received 10 years in prison.
Defense lawyer Paul Bergrin had urged the jury to punish Davis lightly for his crimes, and afterward he blamed the judge for making rulings that tilted the tables against his client.
“We knew ultimately that it was a military court, and that it’s almost impossible to receive justice in a military tribunal,” he said.
Most importantly, Bergrin said, Pohl refused to let him pursue a defense that the Army jury pool had been tainted by comments condemning the Abu Ghraib defendants by President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top military leaders.
The judge ruled that such comments were not prejudicial because they didn’t mention any of the accused by name.
Bergrin said military intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib should also face charges for their alleged role in directing the abuse by prisons guards as a way to soften up detainees for interrogation.
“They all had their hand in this pie and should have been sitting in the same seat that Javal Davis was sitting in,” Bergrin said. “But I don’t believe we’ll ever see them. They’ve been too insulated.”
Davis, a 27-year-old reservist from Roselle, N.J., faced up to 6 1/2 years in prison for battery, dereliction of duty and lying to Army investigators. A deal with prosecutors, however, had capped his sentence at 18 months.
In addition to his own acts, Davis said he saw detainees being physically mistreated and sexually humiliated by other guards, but that he failed to help them or report the abuse, as required under military law.
He also admitted lying to an Army investigator by denying his misdeeds at the Baghdad prison on Nov. 8, 2003.
Maj. Michael Holley, the lead prosecutor, said Davis’s misdeeds have tarnished the image of American soldiers in the world’s eyes and endangered forces now serving in Iraq.
“There must be consequences for those actions,” he said during his closing arguments. “These assaults are best characterized by two words: brutal and cowardly.”
Davis described harsh conditions for the Abu Ghraib guards that created high levels of stress. He said they had to sleep in filthy jail cells and eat bad food while working long hours trying to control vast numbers of hostile prisoners.
“Abu Ghraib was like hell on earth,” he said on the witness stand Thursday.
