{"id":115126,"date":"2021-07-02T19:42:27","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T23:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=115126"},"modified":"2021-07-02T19:42:27","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T23:42:27","slug":"marine-raider-guilty-in-death-of-green-beret-ssg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=115126","title":{"rendered":"Marine Raider guilty in death of Green Beret SSG"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
SSG Logan Melgar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jeff LPH 3 sends in word that the court martial for GySgt Mario Madera-Rodriguez, a Marine Raider, has returned a guilty verdict. He got off on the felony murder charge, but was guilty on the other counts, to wit guilty of hazing, false official statements, conspiracy charges and involuntary manslaughter.<\/p>\n

Army Times reports<\/a>;<\/p>\n

A military jury found a Marine Raider on trial in the 2017 death of a Green Beret staff sergeant in Mali guilty of hazing, false official statements, conspiracy charges and involuntary manslaughter.<\/p>\n

Gunnery Sgt. Mario Madera-Rodriguez was found not guilty of felony murder, the most serious charge along with burglary, though the jury did find him guilty of a lesser offense of \u201chousebreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The jury came to their verdict late Thursday night after a day\u2019s deliberations in the three-week trial at Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia.<\/p>\n

Madera-Rodriguez was the last of four co-defendants charged in the June 4, 2017, strangulation death of Army Green Beret Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar.<\/p>\n

The defense argued from the outset that the death of Melgar was not intentional and was essentially a hazing incident gone wrong.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors leaned on the expert knowledge of the men involved, saying their acts, even their planning, violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and they knew the dangers of putting Melgar in a chokehold during their surprise attack on him.<\/p>\n

The incident took place in Melgar\u2019s bedroom at the off-site housing he shared with other special operators in Bamako, Mali.<\/p>\n

The jury began listening to instructions regarding the sentencing phase Friday and are expected to hear testimony through next week, following the July 4 holiday. The jury will also hear sentencing arguments from attorneys on both sides possibly by next Thursday, officials said.<\/p>\n

If sentenced at the maximum range of the most serious charge, involuntary manslaughter, Madera-Rodriguez could serve as much time as one of his co-defendants, who pleaded guilty and received a 10-year sentence.<\/p>\n

The combined potential sentencing of all the guilty charges could technically result in a maximum possible 27.5-year sentence, dishonorable discharge and reduction in rank to E-1, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

However, that would be if charges were to run consecutively, meaning each charge would be served before time on the next charge began. Most often, sentencing runs concurrently when convictions occur from the same crime. Then, the most actual time that a defendant would receive would be for the most severe charge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can’t say I’m surprised. When all your co-conspirators have plead guilty, that’s not a good sign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff LPH 3 sends in word that the court martial for GySgt Mario Madera-Rodriguez, a Marine … Marine Raider guilty in death of Green Beret SSG<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,232,83,406,585,331],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army","category-army-news","category-breaking-news","category-guest-link","category-marine-recon","category-marines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115127,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115126\/revisions\/115127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}