Judge Removes Prosecutor From Navy SEAL War Crimes Case
Speaker 1: 00:00 Naval prosecutors in the court, Marshal of Navy Seal Edward Gallagher now have to regroup. On Monday, the court ordered lead prosecutor commander Christopher Chap, lack removed from the case judge Aaron Roommate. The unusual move as a remedy for prosecutors secrets, cyber surveillance of defense attorney's emails. The murder case against Gallagher had been set to begin next week. Now that timeframe or even if the case will be allowed to proceed is up in the air. Joining me as KPBS military reporter Steve Walsh, Steve, welcome back. Hi Maureen, is this removal by the judge the same as finding prosecutorial misconduct in this case? Speaker 2: 00:38 No, it's not. Judge Rule was actually very clear about that. He said that he could actually not judge whether or not there had been prosecutor misconduct that was not part of his authority. So what he removed Christopher Chap like four it was a potential conflict of interest in this whole leak investigation. Speaker 1: 00:56 Now, another prosecutor was removed from the case as well. Was it for the same reason? Speaker 2: 01:00 We don't know. All we know is that last week in court it was mentioned that the marines had pulled their attorney, in this case, a marine jag officer Speaker 1: 01:10 removing the lead prosecutor was the remedy. The judge said for prosecutors introducing tracking codes to emails sent to defense attorneys. They were reportedly looking for the source of leaks in the case. What does the prosecution say in its defense for using that tactic? Speaker 2: 01:27 Well, what they say is in what they said in court was that this didn't rise to the level of actually spying on the defense, which is what the defense is contending. And they're also saying that, um, they were simply trying to find the source of these leaks and they were using whatever means they had at their disposal. Speaker 1: 01:43 How much could removing two people from the prosecutor's team affect them? Speaker 2: 01:48 Well, it could effect it tremendously. We, we've been taken aside and told that you can substitute other prosecutors. You can bring other prosecutors in to help with this case. But we have two members of the prosecution team that are now off of this. We've got to trial that's supposed to be coming up on Monday. It's kind of hard to see at this point that a, that trial is going to go off though. Um, somebody's going to have to file a motion, either prosecutors or the defense team themselves. From their standpoint, the defense team has said that, uh, they've spent all their time on this whole notion of a leak investigation, so they haven't had adequate time to prepare. So we'll see in the next couple of days whether or not one of them will ask judge roof for a continuance. Speaker 1: 02:28 So far, defense attorneys have been successful in making their case that the tactics used by navy prosecutors were improper. Could this ultimately lead to a dismissal of the case? Speaker 2: 02:39 Well, that's what the defense is asking for. They're asking for a complete dismissal because of prosecutorial misconduct. If you read into what we know of the judge's motion in this case, that he's already seems to have given his remedy, he's allowed Eddie Gallagher to be released pretrial, he was in confinement and he's now removed the prosecutor this case. So he certainly could come back at the end of the week and decide it's time to dismiss this, but it doesn't feel like that's the way he's leaning. Yeah. Speaker 1: 03:08 So Gallagher is accused of very serious crimes stabbing to Jeff and Iraqi prisoners shooting at Iraqi civilians. How do you think the gravity of those crimes will weigh in the judge's decision whether or not to move forward on the case? Speaker 2: 03:21 Be a tremendous shot in the foot for both prosecutors and the judge and the military justice system as a whole. If this, after all of this buildup and all of the people weighing in on this case that it never actually reached trial because of this leak investigation, which was really 10 gentle to the whole process. Speaker 1: 03:39 So the trial, as you say, is set to begin next Monday. How long does it seem? This shakeup of the prosecution team could delay it? Speaker 2: 03:47 We don't know how long. We do know that this judge has wanted to get this case moving. He'd like to have this case done by July and they've already blocked off three weeks for this. You not only have a situation where you know the judge impatient to get this moving in the who was taken into custody back in September of 2018 but you also have witnesses that were scheduled to testify and you even have a, one of the attorneys in the case is scheduled to leave, leave the military. So that would leave the defense shorthanded. Speaker 1: 04:16 I've been speaking with KPBS military reporter, Steve Walsh. She will be following this case. Oh yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Maureen. Speaker 3: 04:24 [inaudible].
