By Andrew Longstreth
NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - A partial plea by the former
U.S. Army private accused of leaking documents to WikiLeaks
appears to be a two-pronged defense strategy that seeks both to
win sympathy from the judge and to shift the focus of the trial
to charges that are more difficult to prove, legal experts said.
The plea for the accused private, Bradley Manning, was made
public late Wednesday evening by his attorney, who wrote in a
blog post that his client had offered to plead guilty to some of
the charges brought by prosecutors while contesting the other
accusations in court.
The so-called naked plea is a rarely used tactic employed in
military court proceedings and would only have to be accepted by
the military judge overseeing the case. It does not require
consent from prosecutors who have brought 22 charges against
Manning in what has been described as the largest leak of
classified government documents in history.
Manning is accused of passing the documents to WikiLeaks,
the online whistleblowing site founded by Australian Internet
activist, Julian Assange. WikiLeaks has never confirmed that
Manning was the source of any documents it released.
Among other charges, Manning is accused of unauthorized
possession of information related to national defense and
stealing records belonging to the United States.
In his blog post, Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, wrote that
his client is "attempting to accept responsibility for offences
that encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged
offenses." This process is known as pleading by exceptions and
substitutions.
Coombs did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The plea tactic seems aimed at achieving two goals, legal
experts said.
First, it is seen as an attempt by Manning to curry favor
with the judge in a bid for a more lenient sentence. Under this
theory, Manning hopes the judge will go easy on him for
acknowledging actions he would not be able to refute at trial,
said Victor Hansen, a former military lawyer and a professor at
New England Law School.
"He can say 'I manned up to what I did,'" said Hansen.
At the same time, Manning could be trying to pare down the
prosecution's case to the most difficult charges to prove,
including accusations that he intended to aid the enemy, in this
case, al Qaeda.
Proving that Manning intended to aid the enemy could require
prosecutors to establish that Manning wanted the leaked
information to reach al Qaeda, and that is a high legal bar,
said David Velloney, a military law expert who is a professor at
the Regent University School of Law.
"He's looking to fight the case in the most tactically
favorable way and in the light most favorable to him," said
Velloney.
But there are dangers in Manning's strategy. Even if the
judge accepts the deal, there's no guarantee that Manning will
be credited for pleading guilty to certain offenses in this late
stage of the case.
By pleading guilty to certain facts, Manning also gives up
any right to contest them at trial, which potentially could make
it easier for the government to prove its most serious charges.
"That's the cost-benefit analysis you have to do," said
Philip Cave, a military law expert in private practice.
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks founder Assange faces extradition to
Sweden from Britain for questioning in a sexual molestation
case. He has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
Assange and his supporters have said the Swedish case
against him could be part of a secret plot to have him shipped
for trial to the United States and either executed or imprisoned
at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
U.S. officials have denied those assertions. But they have
acknowledged that a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia,
has been collecting evidence about WikiLeaks and some of its
activists. Officials have not ruled out U.S. criminal charges
against Assange.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball)
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