September 24, 2006 — Washington Post

The Army vs. Spec. Richmond

Edward Richmond Jr. says he was doing his duty when he shot a civilian in Iraq, but the Army convicted him of manslaughter. His father's mission is to clear his name.

By Anne Hull

Eddie Richmond's son got back from the war in June. He wanted nothing in the way of a homecoming, no yellow ribbons tied around trees, none of the piles of boiled crawfish that sent him off.

While other sons came home from Iraq with duffel bags that spilled sand from the desert, 22-year-old Edward Richmond Jr. carried release papers from an Army jail.

Edward had been among the first soldiers to be sent to prison for killing a civilian in the Iraq war, and among the first to walk out of prison. What waited for him was a parole officer in heat-struck Louisiana.

Ascension Parish was the same -- green and mossy lowlands afloat with Whataburgers, Starcuts, daiquiri drive-throughs and gas stations that sell hot shrimp by the pound -- but Edward was different.

He didn't like anyone standing too close. He slept on the floor instead of the bed. When he went through a box the Army had sent home, he found his uniform, infantry badges and ribbons. The vestments of a soldier's life. Edward put all of it in the trash.

His release coincided with a wave of investigations into U.S. soldiers killing civilians in Iraq. After an incident at Haditha, more than a dozen Marines are being questioned in the deaths of as many as two dozen civilians. Some blamed the fog of war or the stress of combat. Others said they only did what they were trained to do.

"War is not a pretty thing," Edward's father often said. "Things happen in a war zone."

The Army had trained his son to kill. Then Edward went to Iraq, and the Army decided he had killed someone the wrong way.

For two years now, his father has asked the Army why his son was prosecuted.

Even after Edward's release from prison, the 52-year-old Richmond's war rages on. He owns an air conditioning and heating business, and as he changed out compressors in the mosquito-rife back yards around Baton Rouge, sweating and heaving, Iraq was with him. He cited page numbers and footnotes from his son's case, like a record needle dropping down mid-song: "In Captain Morgan's statement on the 28th . . . "

Edward was a casualty of something, and so was his father.

In Gonzales, a large American flag hangs outside the Richmond house on two shaded acres. If the family feels any shame or anger, they keep it to themselves.

Eddie Richmond strolled into a coffee shop one afternoon and proudly told the owner, "Edward's home, he's healthy as a mule, he's just getting settled."

But many in Gonzales know about the father's crusade against the Army. It is an awkward fight for someone who drives a truck with a decal that says, "Home of the Free, Because of the Brave." Eddie gets his news from Fox and his accent from the rural hills of north Louisiana. His own father was a decorated Marine disabled in the Korean War. He served three years in the Air Force.

What fueled his frustration was a cache of confidential Army documents he had gotten his hands on that described how another soldier in Edward's brigade with the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, had shot and killed unarmed civilians. But Edward was the one who went to prison.

There seemed little left to fight for. Edward had served his time, been dishonorably discharged, lost his right to vote or carry a firearm, and couldn't leave the state without permission from his parole officer.

The general who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq and convened Edward's court-martial, retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, said he has faith in the military justice system. "If I were Dad, I would be focused on Donald Rumsfeld and his leadership, which took our great military to war without a strategy, with insufficient troops on the ground, which allowed chaos to rein in early 2004," Batiste said.

So Iraq was a mess and Edward was folded into the mess. This was unacceptable to Eddie Richmond.

Father and son shared the same name, but it was the elder Richmond who went by "Eddie" and his son the more formal "Edward." The son was always the guarded one in life, and he came home from prison burning with mistrust. At Fort Sill, Edward spent much of his time in a segregated cell for discipline violations. "You gotta understand, he didn't believe he belonged there," said Charles W. Gittins, a civilian lawyer handling his appeal.

It is impossible to know whether Edward wanted his name cleared as much as his father. He refused to be interviewed for this story.

His second week back, Edward got a job at a foundry outside Gonzales. He woke at 4 each morning and spent the next 10 hours near a furnace so hot that his boots smoked. One day his boss called him "jarhead." People knew his story.

While Louisiana sweltered and beer signs blinked in the windows of the bars where the Blind River Outlaws played "brain-busting, spine-tingling Southern metal," all Edward did was work.

His schoolteachers had always imagined that the exceptionally bright boy would be a mathematician or an engineer. His parents liked to say he joined the Army after 9/11, but Edward was less a twin towers avenger than an 18-year-old who needed a fresh start.

As a boy, he preferred playing computer games to hunting squirrels with his dad. He took medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He competed on the math team and was described as a "genius" by two former teachers.

But Edward refused to follow instructions if he thought they were pointless. His father made many trips to meet with administrators at East Ascension High School, including assistant principal Gwynne Pecue, who found him overprotective but struggling to understand his son. At the start of 11th grade, Edward announced that high school had nothing more to teach him, and he dropped out.

He was involved in an altercation with some local boys the next year, and he was charged with resisting arrest and disturbing the peace. His next run-in was more serious. A few months shy of his 18th birthday, Edward was arrested with crack cocaine and marijuana in an undercover drug sting. After deputies swooped in, he punched an officer in the chest and tried to run. He was charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, possession of marijuana, battery of a police officer and resisting arrest.

Edward did a 30-day stint in rehab, passed his GED and enrolled at Louisiana State University, but he still faced felony drug charges. The military was his answer.

"There was the understanding that if you don't do this, the DA will prosecute you," said his attorney, Carl E. Babin of Baton Rouge. A soldier was born. The prosecutor did not seek a conviction.

A recruiter who worked in the Gonzales office at the time said Edward scored high on his tests and said he wanted to serve his country. "He had some problems, but it wasn't anything that we couldn't put him in the Army for," said the recruiter, who was not supposed to discuss Edward and asked that his name not be used.

From basic training, Edward shipped to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, home of the 1st Batallion/27th Infantry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division. He broke his jaw in a bar fight and joined the headquarters company mortar platoon. In "Lightning Thrust Warrior" training exercises, Edward was chosen as best gunner and "hero of the battle."

His father counseled him about challenging his superiors. "Regardless of whether they are right or not, they are wearing stripes," he said.

"Daddy," Edward answered, "dumb people are hard to deal with."

For a kid from the middle-class suburbs, he could trash-talk like a thug, "but when he put on those glasses and buried his nose in a book, his whole attitude changed," said Sgt. Shaun Mittler, Edward's squad leader in Hawaii.

Sometimes he came off as a know-it-all. By the time his mortar platoon got its orders for Iraq, "everybody turned on him," said his buddy, Pfc. Frederick Sidney. "He would speak out. Everybody else was trying to suck up."

Spec. Richmond went home to Gonzales before deploying. Yellow ribbons were tied around the oaks in his yard. A photograph shows Edward at a picnic table giving his little sister a playful headlock. In another shot he is shirtless and handsome, with deep-set eyes and vacation stubble, staring steadily into the camera.

"I'm ready," he told his mother.

'Frightening and Chaotic'

Iraq was cold and rainy when the mortar platoon got there in February of 2004. The mud was frozen around Forward Operating Base McHenry, a primitive outpost south of Kirkuk. To fend off sniper attacks, a 10-foot mound of dirt, topped with triple-stand razor wire, surrounded the base. Beyond the wire were outlying roads littered with bombs, especially on the way to Hawija.

"We didn't know anything about the people or their land," said Mittler, the sergeant. "We all had our finger on the trigger. It was frightening and chaotic."

Late one night, according to Army court documents, Edward's squad was briefed on a mission. Word came that high-level insurgents were hiding in the village of Taal Al Jal, possibly with weapons. The plan was for Alpha Company to perform the raid while Edward and the mortar guys set up a security checkpoint outside the mud wall of the village. Sgt. Jeffrey Waruch relayed their orders: Shoot any males fleeing the village, but check with him if possible before firing.

The raid started at daybreak. Edward could hear screaming in Arabic and English, and shotguns blowing the locks from doors. After the sun was up, cow and sheep herders from the village made their way into the fields with their animals.

A call came over the radio to detain all males leaving the village. Edward saw a cow herder in a field about 200 yards away. Waruch would later testify that Edward asked if he could shoot the man; Edward said he asked if he was supposed to shoot the man.

Waruch said no and set out for the cow herder, telling Edward to come along.

The man wore sweat pants, a baggy top and a head scarf. As the two soldiers approached with rifles and plastic flex-cuffs, the Iraqi became angry and began pointing back to the village.

Waruch pantomimed for the man to put his hands in the air. As the soldiers came within three yards of the Iraqi, Waruch told Edward to stand guard with his rifle while he handcuffed the man. Waruch did a quick upper-body search. As he tried to pull the man's wrists down to handcuff him, he resisted, and Waruch ordered Edward to raise his weapon to "high ready."

Edward would later say that Waruch told him to "shoot him if he moves," a statement Waruch would deny making.

Edward was at close range, but he flipped his rifle scope up, training its red dot on the cow herder's head.

The man stopped resisting as Waruch cuffed him, and the sergeant turned to lead him back to the road. As they walked on the uneven field, the man lost his balance and stumbled into Waruch.

A single shot from Edward's M4 rang out. The Iraqi dropped. Waruch squatted down, covering his ears.

Edward was pale and holding his rifle with one hand. He said the Iraqi had jumped at the sergeant.

Brain matter was seeping from the man's eyes. His cows were wandering away in the field.

Another soldier came up. Seeing the dead man's bound hands, he said to Edward with profane prescience, "You are f - - - - - ."

Edward had been in Iraq less than three weeks.

A Soldier's Trial

Eddie Richmond bought a $1,700 ticket from New Orleans to Kuwait, then caught military transports the rest of the way in. A hot, sandy wind swirled through the Black Hawk helicopter that carried him to the 1st First Infantry Division's headquarters in Tikrit. Edward's battalion, normally with the 25th Infantry Division, fell under the command of the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq.

As the months had passed, Eddie felt sure that the Army would drop its case against Edward. "I know my son, and he would not just shoot someone," he said. "How many of our kids over there hesitate and die?"

But the Army charged Edward with unpremeditated murder and scheduled his general court-martial in Tikrit in August. He faced life in prison.

The trial was held in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces near the Tigris River. At night, father and son slept in a room with some special operations soldiers. Eddie found it surreal: The same Army that was his gracious host was prosecuting his son.

He sat behind Edward in the makeshift courtroom. When the prosecution showed photos of the dead cow herder on a projection screen, Eddie felt a knot in his stomach. The man's name was Muhamad Husain Kadir. Part of his head was missing.

The key witness against Edward was Waruch. The sergeant testified that after he handcuffed Kadir, he patted him on the shoulder and said to Edward, "He's good, let's go." Waruch said he even saw Edward lower his rifle. Then came the blast.

Edward took the stand, wearing his desert camouflage and glasses. His accent dripped like the river parish he came from.

Edward testified that Waruch ordered him to shoot Kadir if he moved, so he raised his rifle and aimed at the man's head. Looking through his scope, he was unable to see Waruch put the handcuffs on. When he saw what looked like Kadir lunging at Waruch, he believed that his sergeant's life was in danger.

The defense tried to keep out a statement Edward gave a month after the incident, admitting that he was pumped on adrenaline and "had to know" that Kadir was cuffed "before I shot him but it just did not register in my mind at that time." Edward signed the statement after an agent with the Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) told him he flunked a polygraph; he really hadn't.

Prosecutors goaded him. Hadn't it been obvious that a herder walking in a field with cows was not fleeing the village?

"You don't look at everybody as Saddam Hussein himself, sir, but until it is clarified otherwise, you have to be suspicious," Edward answered. "I mean, people are dying every day, so you have be suspicious of everyone, sir."

"Answer the question," the prosecutor said. "Did you or did you not assume that Mr. Kadir had escaped from the village?"

"I knew he had come from the village, sir," Edward said. "I didn't know. I hadn't formed an opinion based off that."

Two of Edward's fellow soldiers testified that he often talked about wanting to kill an Iraqi. But under cross-examination, they said most soldiers did. Edward's sergeant said he was one of the better soldiers in his platoon.

Waruch's credibility was also on trial. Staff Sgt. Marcus Warner testified that Waruch was a "compulsive liar." His nickname was "Shady Jay."

Eddie Richmond watched his son, admiring his confidence. Edward never second-guessed himself. "Daddy, I've done my job, and I did what I thought was right," he said. He believed he would be acquitted.

He was only partly right. The jury found him not guilty of unpremeditated murder but guilty of voluntary manslaughter. The prosecution was recommending eight years in prison and a dishonorable discharge.

Edward had one chance to address the court before sentencing. Instead of asking for mercy, he expressed a vague regret.

"If I had known everything then that I know now, it wouldn't have happened, and I am sorry that it had to come to this," he said.

The jury gave him three years, a demotion in rank and a dishonorable discharge. He was shipped to the Fort Sill Regional Correctional Facility, an Army prison in the hills of Oklahoma, where he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sadness Turns To Anger

His father went home to Gonzales.

"You could see the mourning," said his friend Marvin "Bud" Ragland, a retired rice farmer. "His son -- his oldest child -- went to war for his country and was branded by that country as a murderer."

But Eddie received something in the mail that would shift him to outrage. Inside an envelope with no return address were confidential Army documents. One page was stamped "Serious Incident Report." It was part of an Army investigative file, known as a 15-6. The subject was Sgt. Jeffrey Waruch.

Eddie sat in his kitchen and began to read. Waruch had shot three female civilians, one of whom died. Eddie vaguely remembered the sergeant being asked about it at Edward's trial, but the judge had limited the questions. Edward never mentioned it to him. The documents Eddie held in his hand -- sworn statements by Waruch and several other soldiers -- laid out what happened in detail.

Ten days before Edward shot the cow herder, the mortar platoon was riding in a convoy to Al-Abassi when a roadside bomb exploded. Soldiers began firing from the sides of their vehicles. No one was seriously hurt by the bomb, but orders went out to stop any Iraqis fleeing the area.

Waruch began running across farmland after a group of several Iraqis in the distance. After crossing a muddy stream in pursuit, he fired warning shots in the air and screamed for them to stop.

According to his written statement, Waruch said he was 200 yards away when one of the Iraqis knelt down with what looked like a tube-like object, possibly a rocket-propelled grenade. Waruch fired about five times, knocking down two bodies. This subdued the group, but as he moved closer, two other Iraqis suddenly started to run toward him, with one reaching into her clothes. He fired five more rounds.

Arriving at the group in the field, he saw that a girl was shot in the head and her pulse was gone. Another female was hit in the thigh and going into shock. Another was shot in the knee.

Waruch had fired on a mother and her two daughters, killing a 14-year-old. The survivors would later tell a reporter that they had been weeding a bean field and had started to run as the Americans ran toward them.

Waruch was initially cleared of any wrongdoing, but a second review found that he had violated the rules of engagement. The girl had been trying to surrender when she was shot. No weapons were found.

As a result of the shootings, the battalion commander ordered that the soldiers be retrained: no spraying of bullets, aimed shots only, and only when under hostile intent.

Eddie felt his eyes burning with tears. Whoever sent him the file wanted him to see that the prosecution's key witness against his son was under investigation for his own civilian casualties. As he studied the documents, he saw that one soldier had escaped punishment and that another was needed to pay for the platoon's mistakes.

Eddie wrote to members of Congress and the Army CID. When a reporter from the Dayton Daily News in Ohio called, researching a story on civilian deaths in Iraq, Eddie shared his documents and pushed the Army for more. Eddie wanted the same spotlight that burned on his son to burn on Waruch.

In May 2005, more than a year after the incident, the CID opened an investigation into the shooting of the three female civilians. Waruch left the Army early this year. The investigation remains open. Attempts to reach Waruch for comment for this story were unsuccessful.

Edward turned 22 in prison. He subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, gorged on science fiction novels and built muscle. He refused to bend to the will of Fort Sill, spending much of his time in a segregation cell for discipline violations.

"It's a mental war," he wrote his parents. "I'll be fine."

Eddie contacted Defend the Defenders, an organization that raises funds for the legal defense of soldiers and Marines accused of crimes in combat. It was founded by Merry Pantano, whose son, Marine 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano, was charged with murdering two Iraqis but was acquitted last year by the Marine Corps. Pantano agreed to fund Edward's appeal.

Eddie slapped his truck with "Defend the Defenders" stickers and wore the group's T-shirt that said, "Who's Got Their Backs?" The war in Iraq roiled on, but for Eddie it was frozen on two days, 10 days apart, in February 2004.

Then came a break. In April, the Army's clemency board granted Edward parole.

When he was released in June, he had served nearly two years of a three-year sentence. He called from the airport in Lawton, Okla., and told his parents, "I'm a free man." They picked him up in Baton Rouge. He was pale but rock-hard from exercise, and still had a grunt's haircut.

He soon received a congratulatory call from Ilario Pantano, the Marine acquitted of murder. In a sense they both belonged to the same fraternity of the misunderstood.

Edward told his father he didn't want anyone feeling sorry for him. He wanted to start over. But his father could not let go so easily. After Edward put his Army uniform and ribbons in the trash, Eddie retrieved them and took them to the charity bins behind the grocery store in town.

In Iraq, the Army has tried to make up for the tragedies.

The family of Muhamad Husain Kadir was paid $1,000 for his death.

The Army paid more than $4,000 to the family of the girl killed by Waruch, among them her wounded sister and mother, whose leg was amputated. The 1st Battalion commander wrote a sympathy letter to the family. "I ask for your continued support as we attempt to provide a safe and secure environment," wrote Lt. Col. C. Scott Leith. He closed by quoting the Koran: "We belong to Allah and to him we shall return."

The former 1st Infantry Division commander in Iraq, Batiste, is now the president of a steel company.

Edward is earning $10 an hour at the foundry.

The chapter was closing, but not for Eddie Richmond.

"I just want the truth to come out," he said. As summer turns to fall, he wears his Defend the Defenders T-shirt, waiting for word on his son's appeal.

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