Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, a U.S. Marine, has been convicted of killing an Iraqi civilian back in 2006, along with charges for larceny and making false statements.
Prosecutors argued during Hutchins' retrial last Tuesday that the killing was motivated by the desire to send a message to a very vigilant and resistant village.
"This case is about a sergeant who came up with a plan to grab someone out of their bed in the middle of the night, ziptie him and kill him," Major Samson Newsome said during the opening arguments of the trial.
Hutchins' defense lawyer, Chris Oprison, dismissed the arguments, saying it was a weak case and that it was politically motivated, Reuters reported. He also noted that the case came to be following a massacre of civilians,
"Sergeant Hutchins was out there to do his job, to execute his mission and to bring his men home alive. Political and diplomatic pressure to make a fall guy on this case, right after Haditha, was palpable," Oprison said.
Hutchins, along with six other Marines and a Navy corpsman, were convicted in the Pendleton 8 case, with Hutchins as the squad leader already serving half of his 11-year sentence.
His conviction was overturned by appeals courts twice because prosecutors had violated his rights in 2006, Fox News reported.
