The Andrew Holmes Court-Martial: The Youngest of the Kill Team

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Private First Class Andrew Holmes was described in coverage of his sentencing as the youngest of the five U.S. soldiers accused in the 2010 killings of unarmed Afghan civilians. He was 19 when he fired a heavy machine gun at a 15-year-old boy, Gul Mudin, from about 15 feet away. That happened after Specialist Jeremy Morlock threw a grenade and told him to shoot. In September 2011 Holmes pleaded guilty to murder by an inherently dangerous act under Article 118(3) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The charge had been reduced by agreement from premeditated murder. He also pleaded guilty to possessing a finger bone taken from the body and to drug use, and was sentenced to seven years. His case answers a direct question: a low-ranking soldier who fires on an unarmed person when a more senior soldier tells him to is still guilty of murder. Youth and rank affected the deal and the sentence, not the verdict.

The Holmes Record in Brief

Item Record
Accused Private First Class Andrew Holmes, 5th Stryker Brigade, Joint Base Lewis-McChord
Age at the killing 19
Original charges Conspiracy, premeditated murder, and other charges
Plea (Sept. 22, 2011) Guilty to murder by an inherently dangerous act, possessing a finger bone from the victim, and using marijuana (reported as hashish)
Sentence (Sept. 23, 2011) Seven years under his plea deal
Release Left Fort Leavenworth on Oct. 25, 2015

Holmes’s Account of the Shooting

The Associated Press, in a 2015 report carried by CBS News, recounted the plea. Holmes “acknowledged that he fired a heavy machine gun at a startled, unarmed civilian from 15 feet away after a co-defendant, then-Cpl. Jeremy Morlock, tossed a grenade at him. The man posed no threat, Holmes said.” The 2011 sentencing report carried by NBC News said Holmes “still insists he had no prior intent to kill the boy but exercised poor judgment when he obeyed an order from a higher-ranking GI in his unit to shoot the unarmed youth.” That report also said both Holmes and Morlock “appeared in separate photos showing them crouched over the bloodied corpse”.

Murder Without Premeditation: Article 118(3)

Article 118 recognizes four kinds of murder. The plea agreement moved Holmes from clause (1), a killing with “a premeditated design to kill”, to clause (3). Clause (3) covers a person who “is engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to another and evinces a wanton disregard of human life”.

Clause (3) did not require Holmes to have planned the boy’s death. It required an act inherently dangerous to another, done with wanton disregard for life. Firing a heavy machine gun at an unarmed person at close range meets that description on Holmes’s own account. Removing premeditation reduced the exposure. Under the Manual for Courts-Martial, Part IV, paragraph 56, clauses (1) and (4) carry death or mandatory life, while clauses (2) and (3) carry “such punishment other than death as a court-martial may direct.” It did not remove the finding that he unlawfully killed a person who posed no threat.

Why the Order Did Not Excuse Him

Holmes’s account rested on obedience: he fired because a more senior soldier told him to. Rule for Courts-Martial 916(d) makes obedience a defense “unless the accused knew the orders to be unlawful or a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the orders to be unlawful.” The Manual also says an order to perform a military duty may be inferred to be lawful, but “This inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.” An instruction to shoot an unarmed person who poses no threat is that kind of order. Holmes’s own statement that “The man posed no threat” is the fact that took the defense away.

How Youth and Rank Shaped the Outcome

The reduced charge and the seven-year term reflect the plea, not a finding that he was a bystander. Holmes was charged with one of the three killings. The others received very different outcomes:

Accused Resolution Reported sentence
Spc. Jeremy Morlock Guilty plea with cooperation to three murders, Mar. 2011 24 years
Spc. Adam Winfield Guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter, Aug. 2011 3 years
Pfc. Andrew Holmes Guilty plea to murder by an inherently dangerous act, Sept. 2011 7 years
Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs Contested trial, Nov. 2011 Life with eligibility for parole

At the time, Holmes’s attorney, Daniel Conway, “blamed his client’s troubles on the unluckiness of having been assigned to such a dysfunctional unit”, according to the 2015 AP report. Arguments of that kind are sentencing material. They can move the number. They do not change the elements.

Release

The AP reported in October 2015 that Holmes, then 25, “left Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and flew home Sunday evening to the Boise Airport”. It added that he “has been released from prison four years after he admitted shooting an unarmed Afghan boy”.

Murder at a Senior Soldier’s Direction

A soldier at the bottom of the chain can commit murder at the direction of someone above him. The order does not shift the liability when its unlawfulness is obvious. Article 118(3) shows that murder does not require a plan: an inherently dangerous act done with wanton disregard for life is enough. Holmes’s age and rank appear in the record where the law gives them a place, in the plea negotiation and the sentence. They do not appear in the elements of the offense.

Sources

This case study describes a public court-martial record and contemporaneous reporting. It is educational information, not legal advice.

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