William Calley

William Laws Calley, Jr.
Allegiance	United States of America
Service / branch	United States Army
Rank	First Lieutenant
Unit	Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, Americal Division
Battles / wars	Vietnam War *My Lai Massacre

William Laws Calley, Jr. (born June 8, 1943, in Miami, Florida) is a convicted American war criminal. He is the U.S. Army officer found guilty of ordering the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War.

Early life

William Calley came from an ordinary background. Nicknamed "Rusty", he stood five foot four inches tall and was reportedly undistinguished, other than that many people described him as "nice". His father was a United States Navy veteran of World War II. Calley graduated from Miami Edison High School in Miami. He attended Palm Beach Junior College from 1963 to 1964, but dropped out after receiving poor grades, consisting of two C's, one D, and four F's.

Calley was originally rejected for military service for being tone deaf. He then worked at a variety of jobs, including bellhop, dishwasher, salesman, insurance appraiser and train conductor. He did not hold any of these for long and was in San Francisco in 1966, when he received a letter from his Selective Service board requesting reevaluation of his medical condition. On his return to Miami, his car broke down in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He reported to the duty sergeant there, he successfully enlisted in the U.S. Army in Albuquerque on July 26, 1966.

Military career

Calley underwent nine weeks of basic combat training at Fort Benning, Georgia, followed by eight weeks advanced individual training as a company clerk at Fort Lewis, Washington. He applied for and was accepted into Officer Candidate School (OCS). Calley began 16 weeks of junior officer training at Fort Benning in mid-March 1967. Graduating in OCS Class No. 51 on September 7, 1967, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Infantry.

Calley was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, and began training at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii in preparation for deployment to the Republic of Vietnam. In Vietnam, the brigade became part of the Americal Division.

Calley was not highly regarded as a platoon leader. His Officer Evaluation Reports describe him as merely "average". Later, as the My Lai investigation progressed, a more negative picture emerged. Many men in his platoon told Army investigators that Calley lacked common sense and could not even read a map or compass properly. Calley's men claimed he was so disliked that some even thought of "fragging" him.

Murder trial

Calley was charged on September 5, 1969, with six specifications of premeditated murder for the deaths of 109 Vietnamese civilians near the village of My Lai, at a hamlet called Son My, more commonly called My Lai in the U.S. press. As many as 500 villagers, mostly women, children, infants and the elderly, had been systematically killed by American soldiers during a bloody rampage in 1968. If convicted, Calley could face the death penalty.

Calley's trial started on November 17, 1970. After deliberating for 79 hours, the jury convicted him on March 29, 1971, of the premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians. Testimony revealed that Calley had ordered the men of 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry of the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) to kill everyone in the village. Calley claimed he was following the orders of his immediate superior, Captain Ernest Medina. Whether or not this order was given is disputed; Medina was acquitted of all charges relating to the incident at a separate trial. On March 31, 1971, Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor.

Of the 26 officers and soldiers initially charged for their part in the My Lai Massacre or the subsequent cover-up, only Calley would be convicted. He was seen by some as a scapegoat used by the U.S. Army for its failure to instill morale and discipline in its troops and officers. Others, knowing nothing about his education or background, sought to excuse his actions because of his allegedly low intelligence and cultural background. Many saw My Lai as a direct result of the military's attrition strategy with its emphasis on "body counts" and "kill ratios."

House arrest

On April 1, 1971, only a day after Calley was sentenced, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon ordered him transferred from prison to house arrest at Fort Benning, pending appeal. This leniency was protested by Melvin Laird, the Secretary of Defense. The prosecutor, Aubrey Daniel wrote, "The greatest tragedy of all will be if political expedience dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons." On August 20, 1971, the convening authority — the Commanding General of Fort Benning — reduced Calley's sentence to 20 years. The Army Court of Military Review affirmed both the conviction and sentence (46 C.M.R. 1131 (1973)). The Secretary of the Army reviewed the sentence and findings and approved both, but in a separate clemency action commuted confinement to ten years. On May 3, 1974, President Nixon notified the Secretary that he had reviewed the case and determined he would take no further action in the matter.

Ultimately, Calley would serve only three and a half years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning. He petitioned the federal district court for habeas corpus on February 11, 1974, which was granted on September 25, 1974, along with his immediate release, by federal judge J. Robert Elliott. Judge Elliott found that Calley's trial had been prejudiced by pretrial publicity, denial of subpoenas of certain defense witnesses, refusal of the House of Representatives to release testimony taken in executive session of its My Lai investigation, and inadequate notice of the charges. (The judge had released Calley on bail on February 27, 1974, but an appeals court reversed it and returned Calley to Army custody on June 13, 1974.)

Calley was sent to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At his release, the press eagerly awaited his arrival at the prison's South Gate, as promised by the prison commandant. Instead, at Calley's request, he was released at West Gate and taken directly to the Fort Leavenworth airfield, where his escort, an unnamed Georgia Congressman, had him flown home. The press was notified of his departure after the fact, much to the chagrin of the major news network reporters from Kansas City.

The Army appealed Judge Elliott's decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and asked an appeals judge to stay Calley's immediate release, which was granted. However, the full Court upheld the release pending appeal and decided the entire court would hear the appeal (normally not done in the first instance). The Army won a reversal of Judge Elliott's habeas corpus grant and a reinstatement of the judgment of the court-martial, with 5 judges dissenting. (Calley v. Callaway, 519 F.2d 184, 9/10/1975). In a long and extremely detailed careful opinion, the reviewing court disagreed with Judge Elliott on the law and significantly on Elliott's scope of review of the court martial proceeding. The Court noted that although by now Calley had been "paroled" from confinement by the Army, that did not moot the habeas corpus proceedings.

After release

Sometime in 2005 or 2006, Calley divorced his wife Penny, whose father had employed him at the V.V. Vick jewelry store in Columbus since 1975, and moved to downtown Atlanta to live with his son, Laws Calley. In October of 2007, Calley agreed to be interviewed by the the UK newspaper the Daily Mail to discuss the massacre, saying, "Meet me in the lobby of the nearest bank at opening time tomorrow, and give me a certified check for $25,000, then I'll talk to you for precisely one hour." However, when confronted with the journalist's questions about the massacre (and with no money given to him), Calley left.

See also

• Glenn Andreotta, Lawrence Colburn and Hugh Thompson, Jr. - U.S. helicopter crew members who intervened to stop the My Lai killings
• Seymour Hersh - Investigative journalist who broke the story of the massacre and coverup
• Major General Samuel Koster - Commanding officer of the Americal Division
• Captain Ernest Medina - Commanding officer of Charlie Company
• Terry Nelson - One-hit wonder who released "C. Company", a song about Calley in 1971

External links

• TRIAL : William Calley's trial
• Famous American Trials: The My Lai Courts-Martial 1970
• Beidler, Philip D., "Calley's Ghost", Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2003.
• BBC ON THIS DAY | 29 | 1971: Calley guilty of My Lai Massacre