Steven Dale Green (left), 24, was spared the death penalty on Friday after jurors couldn't agree on a punishment for the brutal crime. --PHOTO: AP
PADUCAH (Kentucky) - AN EX-SOLDIER convicted of raping and killing an Iraqi teen and murdering her family has been sentenced to life in prison in a case that drew attention to the emotional and psychological strains on soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Steven Dale Green, 24, was spared the death penalty on Friday after jurors couldn't agree on a punishment for the brutal crime.
CASE FOCUSED ON COMBAT STRESS
Green's attorneys never denied his involvement in the attack, instead focusing on building a case that he didn't deserve the death penalty.
Former Marines and other soldiers Green served with testified that he faced an unusually stressful combat tour in Iraq's 'Triangle of Death' with a unit that suffered heavy casualties and didn't receive sufficient leadership.
In March 2006, after an afternoon of card playing, sex talk and drinking Iraqi whiskey, Pfc. Green and three other soldiers went to the home of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi near Mahmoudiya, about 32 kilometers south of Baghdad.
Green shot and killed the teen's mother, father and sister, then became the third soldier to rape the girl before shooting her in the face. Her body was set on fire.
Federal jurors who convicted Green of rape and murder deliberated for more than 10 hours over two days on whether to give Green a death sentence or life in prison without parole. Since they could not unanimously agree on either, life in prison had to be the verdict.
'It's the better of two bad choices,' said his father, John Green, who sighed as the verdict was read. His son will be sentenced Sept. 4 by US District Judge Thomas B. Russell.
In Baghdad, Iraqis said they were shocked and disappointed that Green was not sentenced to death.
'Has Iraqi blood and honor become so cheap, where a family can be murdered and a daughter raped and killed, and the verdict is life imprisonment?' asked Tariq Dawood, 55.
Haidar Kadom, 31, a teacher there, called the sentence 'a mockery of Iraqi rights.'
'If an Iraqi did the same to an American female soldier, he would be regarded as a terrorist and would be sentenced to death,' he said. -- AP
