Prosecuting Calley was 28-year-old Capt. Aubrey Daniel. Daniel, drafted into service and serving as a trial counsel at Fort Benning, was seen by some to lack the experience to handle such a significant matter.
In the tiny Georgia tiny courtroom, Calley was charged with violating Article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice -- in short, murder of non-combatants. He pled not guilty, and Daniel opened his case.
Daniel told the six-person military jury that it wasn't enough to focus on Calley, that they needed to understand My Lai and the events that surrounded Calley's alleged crimes.
"I want to put you there," Daniel told the jury.
Daniel began his case by calling more than two dozen witnesses to set the scene before he brought in testimony about Calley. Most damning was Pvt. Paul Meadlo, who provided chilling details of the massacre.
At first, Meadlo refused to testify and Daniel was nearing the end of his case. But in a dramatic turnabout, Meadlo agreed to take the stand if given immunity. The private was by Calley's side at My Lai, and his recollection of the incident -- and Calley's actions -- almost three years earlier was devastating.
"He said, 'How come they're not dead?' I said, 'I didn't know we were supposed to kill them.' He said, 'I want them dead." He backed off twenty or thirty feet and started shooting into the people," Meadlo testified.
Almost a month after the trial began, Calley's lawyers opened their case. But the elderly Latimer was almost incoherent. The defense strategy was muddled at best, stuck between the argument that Calley didn't commit the murders and the claim that he was just following orders.
"One of the problems that they had was they didn't know whether the defense was going to be a flat denial, or whether they were going to say he did it or was ordered to do it," Judge Reid Kennedy, who presided at the court-martial, told Court TV.
When it was Daniel's turn for cross-examination, the young prosecutor displayed his talents, exposing the literal-minded Calley's logical flaws.
"I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy," Calley testified. "That was my job on that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified the same, and that was the classification that we dealt with, just as enemy soldiers."
The defense summed up: Calley did little of what he was charged with and was only following superiors' orders. Then came the prosecution's turn. Daniel had one more witness: Capt. Ernest Medina, Calley's commanding officer. Medina, facing his own trial, was called as a witness of the court and flatly denied ever giving those orders to Calley. It was a case of a superior officer's word against his subordinate's.
Six days later, after four months of testimony and 104 witnesses, the case went to the jury on March 16, 1971. The jurors deliberated for thirteen days -- at the time, the longest deliberation by a court-martial jury.
They found Calley guilty of killing at least 22 people and assaulting at least one. Calley saluted, swiveled precisely and left the courtroom. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, at hard labor.
By the time Lt. William Calley's court-martial began at Ft. Benning, Ga., his case had already drawn deep divisions in the Army. Officers who felt that his actions at My Lai were justified acts of war were deeply distressed by Army prosecutors, either because they didn't want the Army's dark secrets exposed or because they felt it was unfair to single out the young lieutenant.
Leading Calley's defense was former military appeals judge George Latimer, along with a team of civilian and military lawyers. Latimer, 70 at the time and half-deaf, was clearly accomplished but many observers felt he was past his prime and was a dubious choice for an arduous case.
Calley's lead defense lawyer, Judge George Latimer (far right) accompanies Calley to court.
Latimer walked Calley through his early years and training, but never quite got to the heart of the defense.
The case opens in a cramped courtroom at Ft. Benning, Ga.
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Calley never quite admitted all of what he was charged with, but was so worn down by the end of Daniel's questioning that he begged Judge Kennedy for a recess before the military jurors got a turn to question him.
Judge Reid Kennedy: Presided over Lt. Calley's court-martial.
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