The Clint Lorance Court-Martial: An Order to Fire and a Presidential Pardon

Most military-justice cases ask whether a soldier was right to disobey. The Clint Lorance case asks the opposite question, and it is the more uncomfortable one: what happens when the unlawful order comes from the officer in charge, and the soldiers under him are the ones who hesitate, question, and ultimately refuse? It is the mirror image of My Lai. There, a lieutenant ordered a massacre and a subordinate had to decide whether “following orders” excused him. Here, a lieutenant gave an order to fire on men who posed no visible threat, his own soldiers balked, and the law placed the criminal liability squarely on the officer who issued the command rather than on the men who carried it out or walked it back.

What happened

On July 2, 2012, First Lieutenant Clint Lorance was leading a foot patrol from the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division through the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan (Wikipedia, “Clint Lorance”). He had been in command of the platoon for only days, having replaced a leader who was medically evacuated. Three Afghan men on a single motorcycle approached the patrol’s position. Lorance ordered his soldiers to open fire. Two of the men were killed by machine-gun fire and the third was wounded and fled (Washington Post, “The Cursed Platoon,” 2020).

The men were unarmed. As Wikipedia summarizes the trial record, “the three men’s hands were visible; they carried no weapons,” and no bomb-making materials were found on them. Several soldiers did not believe the shooting was justified at the moment it happened. One soldier asked permission before firing; Private Skelton testified that “there was no reason to shoot at that moment in time that presented a clear, definitive hostile intent and hostile act,” and Sergeant Williams radioed immediately afterward, “What the hell just happened? There was no threat from those guys whatsoever” (Wikipedia, “Clint Lorance”). Within days, members of the platoon reported their own commander, and at the 2013 trial nine of his soldiers testified against him (Washington Post, 2020). Not one former member of his 1st Platoon spoke in his defense.

A former platoon member, Todd Fitzgerald, later described why they came forward: “Us testifying against him, it wasn’t a matter of not liking him, it wasn’t a matter of any type of grudge or coercion. It was simply we knew that his actions, based on our experience, having operated in that area for months, were going to breed further insurgency” (Army Times, July 1, 2019).

The legal lesson

The case turns on the law governing orders and the rules of engagement. The short version is the one that decided this trial. A service member is bound to obey lawful orders, but an order to use deadly force against people who present no hostile act and no demonstrated hostile intent is not a lawful order, and carrying it out does not transfer the criminal responsibility back to the men who pulled the trigger. The rules of engagement in Afghanistan required a hostile act or hostile intent before lethal force; the panel that convicted Lorance found that neither was present when he gave the command.

Lorance was tried at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and convicted of two counts of second-degree murder, attempted murder, and additional offenses including obstruction of justice (Wikipedia, “Clint Lorance”). Second-degree murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice is unlawful killing with intent but without the premeditation required for the most serious murder charge. The prosecution did not need to prove that Lorance personally fired; it was enough that he ordered the killings. Military law treats a person who commands, counsels, or procures an offense as a principal, liable as fully as the soldier who pulls the trigger. That is why the order itself, not the trigger pull, was the act on trial. The officer who issues an unlawful order to fire owns the deaths that follow, while soldiers who object to or refuse such an order are protected rather than punished. That is the heart of the lesson, and it is also why the platoon’s own conduct mattered so much at trial. The soldiers who paused, asked for confirmation, and questioned the threat were not exposed to liability for hesitating; the record of their hesitation became evidence that the order was not a reasonable response to a hostile act.

The contested factual question was whether the men posed a threat. Lorance’s defense argued that motorcycles were prohibited in the sector and that the riders were a danger to his patrol. Years after the trial, his attorneys claimed that withheld biometric evidence linked the dead men to insurgent activity. The U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals rejected that appeal in June 2017, ruling that the evidence “would not have been admissible at trial, and even if it had, it would not have helped Lorance’s case” (Wikipedia, “Clint Lorance”). Reporting by journalist Annie Jacobsen, who wrote the book “First Platoon,” found the “bombmaker” claims unsubstantiated, noting that men with Taliban connections appear to have merely shared the same names as those killed (Wikipedia, “Clint Lorance”).

Outcome and why it matters

Lorance was sentenced to 20 years of confinement, later reduced to 19 years by the reviewing commanding general, and was confined at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (Wikipedia, “Clint Lorance”). He served roughly six years. A campaign for clemency, driven heavily by Fox News commentary and supportive members of Congress, reached the White House, and on November 15, 2019, President Donald Trump issued a full pardon (CBS 17, Nov. 15, 2019; Washington Post, 2020).

The pardon is where this case earns its second legal lesson, about the clemency power as the final check on the military-justice system. A presidential pardon does not declare the conviction wrong; it forgives the punishment. The court-martial verdict, the finding that the order was unlawful, and the testimony of the nine soldiers all stand as a matter of record. What the pardon changed was the consequence, not the finding. That distinction is why the pardon was so divisive among the men who served under Lorance, who told the Washington Post they experienced it as an erasure of what they had witnessed and reported (Washington Post, 2020). The clemency power sits outside the courtroom by design, as a civilian-controlled remedy for sentences the executive judges too harsh, and the Lorance case is one of the clearest modern illustrations of how that power can override a military panel’s judgment without disturbing the panel’s findings.

The enduring value of the case is the rule it draws so sharply. When an order to use deadly force is unlawful, the law looks first to the person who gave it. The soldiers in 1st Platoon who questioned the order, refused to extend the killing to a boy who approached the scene, and then reported their commander were doing exactly what military law asks of them. The officer bore the liability, and the law’s verdict on that point survived even a presidential pardon.

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Clint Lorance,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Lorance
• Greg Jaffe and others, “Soldiers who served under Clint Lorance in Afghanistan see Trump’s pardon as betrayal” (“The Cursed Platoon”), The Washington Post, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/clint-lorance-platoon-afghanistan/
• “Army officer convicted of murder in Afghanistan to get another look by civilian court,” Army Times, July 1, 2019, https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/07/01/army-officer-convicted-of-murder-in-afghanistan-to-get-another-look-by-civilian-court/
• “Trump pardons 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn,” CBS 17, November 15, 2019, https://www.cbs17.com/news/national-news/trump-pardons-1st-lt-clint-lorance-and-maj-mathew-golsteyn/

This article is an educational overview of a historical court-martial and is not legal advice.