Prosecutors seek to keep Marine imprisoned for killing Iraqi in 2006

Marine Corps lawyers Tuesday petitioned a military appeals court to overturn the court’s earlier ruling that tossed out the conviction of a Marine from Camp Pendleton in the killing of an unarmed Iraqi man.

Two weeks ago, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled that Larry Hutchins was improperly denied a lawyer when investigators in Iraq first began to question him about the 2006 killing.

His lawyer, Babu Kaza, said that Hutchins, who was then a sergeant, was put in solitary confinement for seven days after asking for a lawyer. After seven days, “he broke and informed NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) that he would give them what they wanted,” Kaza said.

But in a motion filed Tuesday, Marine lawyers said there was “no evidence of badgering, coercion, or other improper influence” and that Hutchins agreed to talk to NCIS agents out of a “desire to ‘tell his side of the story.’”

Hutchins has served more than six years of an 11-year sentence for unpremeditated murder, first at the prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kans., and now at the brig at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego to be near his wife and children in Oceanside.

Seven enlisted Marines and one Navy corpsman from Camp Pendleton were convicted at court-martial in the killing that occurred in Hamandiya, west of Baghdad. As the squad leader, Hutchins received the longest sentence. All of the others are now freed; none served more than 18 months.

The plan to drag an unarmed Iraqi from his home and kill him was developed as a warning to other Iraqis not to attack Marines with sniper shots or buried roadside bombs. In the months after the killing of the 52-year-old retired Iraqi police officer, attacks on Marines in the region dropped.

Brig rules prohibit Hutchins from talking to reporters.

After the prosecutors filed their motion, Kaza said that he spoke to Hutchins, who called the motion “frivolous” and “solely designed to stall my imminent release.”

Bing West, former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, author of books about Marines in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, has called for the military to drop the case and let Hutchins go free.

“In Iraq, Sgt. Hutchins faced a morally agonizing choice after a fellow Marine was killed by an unidentified bomber,” West said. “He and his squad struck back blindly. For that wrongful act, he has spent seven years in the brig.”

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tony.perry@latimes.com