On March 12, 2006, four soldiers from the Army's 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Ky., raped and murdered a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and gunned down her family in their home south of Baghdad.
Three of the GIs later were court-martialed and sentenced to long prison terms for what a military prosecutor called "an utter lapse of humanity."
This month in a federal courtroom in Paducah, Ky., a jury will begin weighing the fate of the fourth defendant, former Pfc. Steven Green, who was discharged from the Army before his role in the murders was discovered.
Legal experts say the trial will be the first in U.S. history in which civilian jurors will be asked to decide whether a former service member should be executed for war-time offenses. Green admitted to an investigator that he shot and killed all four victims, according to court records. But he has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers are expected to try to spare his life by putting the Army itself on trial -- in part for deploying him after he told medical personnel he intended to kill Iraqi civilians.
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