Stuart Couch

Last updated

Stuart Couch
Personal details
Born (1965-04-20) April 20, 1965 (age 59) [1]
Education Duke University (BA)
Campbell University (JD)
George Washington University (LLM)
Military service
AllegianceFlag of the United States.svg  United States
Branch/serviceFlag of the United States Marine Corps.svg  United States Marine Corps
Years of service1987–2009
Rank US-O5 insignia.svg Lieutenant Colonel
Unit United States Marine Corps Judge Advocate Division

Stuart Couch (born April 20, 1965 [1] ) is an American lawyer, veteran, and immigration judge. Couch took a conscience driven decision to refuse to prosecute an accused man because he had been tortured by Americans to obtain evidence against him. He was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a resulting film. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Early life and education

Couch graduated from Duke University on a Navy ROTC scholarship in 1987 and was commissioned into the United States Marine Corps as a Second Lieutenant. He was qualified as a naval aviator in November 1989 and flew KC-130 transport aircraft until he attended law school beginning in 1993. He graduated from the Campbell University School of Law with a J.D. in 1996 and was certified as a U.S. Marine Corps judge advocate officer. In 2008 he graduated with a Master of Laws in litigation and dispute resolution from George Washington University. [5]

Career as military prosecutor

Cavalese cable car massacre

Couch was one of three prosecutors of U.S. Marine Corps pilots in three trials involving the collision of a military jet with a ski gondola system in Cavalese, Italy that caused the deaths of twenty European tourists. [6]   Couch successfully prosecuted Marine Captains Richard J. Ashby and Joseph Schweitze for obstruction of justice in 1999 related to the destruction of video recordings of the incident. [7] [8] "He needs to pay the price for his criminal conduct. Capt. Ashby needs to feel the sting for what he has done. He doesn't deserve to wear a uniform" Couch said to jurors at the trial. [7]

MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor cover-up

In 2001, Couch returned to active duty to prosecute Lt. Col. Odin F. Leberman, the commanding officer of the Marine Corps' only V-22 tiltrotor squadron for falsifying maintenance records. [9] [10]   The MV-22 tiltrotor was in development for decades with continued mishaps. Increased costs led to scrutiny by Congress. Leberman had ordered his squadron to falsify maintenance records to make the failure prone tiltrotor seem more reliable [11] before a congressional decision on funding. [12] Leberman later accepted administrative punishment which effectively ended his military career. [10]

Parachute sabotage case

In January 2003, Couch served as lead prosecutor in the case of Lance Corporal Antoine Boykins, a parachute rigger who sabotaged the chutes of 13 fellow Marines prepared for a low-altitude jump near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Three of the parachutes were actually used by jumpers who exited a C-17 airplane, but successfully deployed their emergency reserve chutes and landed safely. Boykins pleaded guilty to charges of nine counts of reckless endangerment, four counts of aggravated assault and one count of destruction of government property. On August 7, 2003, Boykins was sentenced to confinement for 20 years and a dishonorable discharge from the service. [13] [14] [15]

Case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi

In September 2003, Couch was assigned to prepare the prosecution of Mohamedou Ould Slahi after he joined the Office of Military Commissions in August 2003. At that time, Slahi was seen as one of the most important detainees at Guantanamo with allegations that he had helped organise the 9/11 attacks. Couch, as a veteran of the navy's SERE program, on a visit to Guantanamo in October 2003 by chance witnessed an interrogation of a detainee unrelated to his docket. The prisoner was chained to the floor, swaying back and forth, and blasted with heavy metal music and strobe lights. It reminded him of the SERE training he went through as a pilot. After being told by his escort that the procedure had been approved, it "started keeping me up at night … I couldn't stop thinking about it." [2]

Later he learned that Slahi had been subjected to even worse interrogation methods, including beatings, prolonged isolation, extreme cold temperatures, and threatened with death as well as the arrest of his mother. Slahi was eventually hallucinating. "For me, that was just, enough is enough. I had seen enough, I had heard enough, I had read enough. I said: 'That's it." "When I heard that, I knew I gotta get off the fence," "Here was somebody I felt was connected to 9/11, but in our zeal to get information, we had compromised our ability to prosecute him." [2]

Inspired by the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant theologian who had been executed by the Nazis, and hearing the question if he would "respect the dignity of every human being" at a church service, Couch made the decision to refuse to prosecute. [2] In 2004, Couch withdrew from Slahi's prosecution team because he believed he was asked to use evidence obtained through means of coercive interrogation that violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, U.S. laws, and the United States' treaty obligations. [4]

After Wall Street Journal reporter Jess Bravin's article "The Conscience of the Colonel" was published on March 31, 2007, Couch received widespread recognition and international media coverage for his refusal to prosecute Slahi. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] He was presented the American Bar Association's Maleng "Minister of Justice" award in 2007 as well as the German Bar Association Criminal Law Section's "Pro Reo" Award in 2009. In 2021, a feature film based on Slahi's detention The Mauritanian [21] included the role of Lieutenant Colonel Couch as portrayed by the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. [22]

Congressional testimony

Couch was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on November 8, 2007. [23] [24] [25] An e-mail from the Department of Defense's General Counsel, William J. Haynes, II, informed him on November 7, 2007: "... as a sitting judge and former prosecutor, it is improper for you to testify about matters still pending in the military court system, and you are not to appear before the committee to testify tomorrow."

Congressional Representative Jerrold Nadler criticized the Bush administration for stonewalling by withholding Couch's testimony. [25]

Case of Salim Hamdan—Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

From January 2005 until July 2006 Couch was the lead prosecutor for Salim Hamdan, a senior bodyguard and personal driver of Osama bin Laden. [9]   In that role he served as liaison to Solicitor General Paul Clement who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), related to the constitutionality of President Bush's authority to order prosecutions before military commissions at Guantánamo and applicability of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.  The Bush administration eventually lost the case, and with that their ability to set up war crimes tribunals. The New York Times wrote that the Supreme Court ruled "broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law."

Case of Mamdouh Habib

From December 2003 through January 2005, Couch was assigned as a prosecutor for the case of Mamdouh Habib, an Australian national born in Egypt.  Jess Bravin, the author of "The Terror Courts", describes how Couch and the military commissions appointing authority  John Altenburg scuttled a Bush administration demand that charges be filed against Habib. After reviewing the evidence made available to him, Couch was convinced there was insufficient evidence to charge Habib with anything.  In addition, Habib was a victim of a US government extraordinary rendition and appeared to have been subject to torture while held in an Egyptian prison.

Career as judge

Couch left the Office of Military Commissions in 2006 and served on the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals as a Senior Appellate Judge until his retirement in 2009. [26] In October 2010 he was appointed to be an immigration judge by Attorney General Eric Holder. He was appointed by Attorney General William Barr to the Board of Immigration Appeals in August 2019. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mohamedou Ould Slahi</span> Mauritanian author and former Guantanamo Bay detainee

Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a Mauritanian engineer who was detained at Guantánamo Bay detention camp without charge from 2002 until his release on October 17, 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mamdouh Habib</span> Former Guantanamo Bay detainee

Mamdouh Habib is an Egyptian and Australian citizen with dual nationality, best known for having been held for more than three years by the United States as an enemy combatant, by both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military authorities. He was sent by extraordinary rendition from Pakistan to Egypt after his arrest. He was held the longest at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as an enemy combatant. Finally released without charges in January 2005, Habib struggled to have his account of his experiences believed, as he alleged he had been tortured by the CIA, Egyptians, and US military, at times with Australian intelligence officers present. For some time, each of the governments denied his allegations, but they have gradually been confirmed.

Ahcene Zemiri, also known as Hassan Zumiri, is an Algerian citizen who was for seven years a legal resident of Canada, where he lived in Montreal. He and his Canadian wife moved to Afghanistan in July 2001. They were separated when trying to leave in November 2001 and Zemiri was arrested and turned over to United States forces. He was transferred to the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2002, where he was detained for eight years without charge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salim Hamdan</span> Guantanamo detainee

Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan is a Yemeni man, captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, declared by the United States government to be an illegal enemy combatant and held as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to November 2008. He admits to being Osama bin Laden's personal driver and said he needed the money.

Robert L. Swann is an American lawyer and retired career Army colonel. He was the second Chief Prosecutor of the Military Commission at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, serving 2004 to 2006. He followed Fred Borch, who resigned in disgrace, and William Lietzau, acting Chief Prosecutor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Borch</span> American lawyer

Colonel Frederic L. Borch was a career United States Army attorney with a master's degree in national security studies, who served as chief prosecutor of the Guantanamo military commissions. He resigned his commission in August 2005 after three prosecutors complained that he had rigged the system against providing due process to defendants. He was replaced by Robert L. Swann

Michael Dante Mori, also known as Dan Mori, is an American lawyer who attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps. Mori was the military lawyer for Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moe Davis</span> American politician (born 1958)

Morris Durham "Moe" Davis is an American retired U.S. Air Force colonel, attorney, educator, politician, and former administrative law judge.

Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al-Darbi is a citizen of Saudi Arabia who was held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba from August 2002 to May 2018; in May 2018, he was transferred to Saudi Arabia's custody. He was the only detainee held at Guantanamo released during President Donald Trump's administration.

"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.

Kevin M. Sandkuhler is an American lawyer, and retired brigadier general in the United States Marine Corps. His 2003 memo expressing concerns about the US interrogation of terrorism suspects, released in 2005 after a declassification request by Senator Lindsey Graham, received national and international attention.

Colby Vokey is an American lawyer and former officer in the United States Marine Corps. He currently practices criminal defense law in his own private practice. He represents clients in all types of criminal matters, with particular emphasis on cases involving military law. Vokey earned the rank of lieutenant colonel and served as a judge advocate in the United States Marine Corps during 21 years of service to his country. His retirement from the Marine Corps became effective November 1, 2008. During his military career, Vokey earned worldwide praise for his work ethic and integrity, based in part on his work for defendants detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who faced charges stemming from the war in Iraq.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence Morris</span>

Attorney Lawrence J. Morris is the chief of staff and counselor to the president at The Catholic University of America and a retired United States Army colonel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian L. Mizer</span> United States Navy JAG officer

Brian L. Mizer is a United States Navy JAG officer. He is from the State of Nebraska. He attended Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, for his undergraduate degree and Case Western Reserve University for his Juris Doctor.

Michael J. Lebowitz is a Washington, D.C., attorney and expert in the field of military law and Military Expression. Along with being an advocate for veterans' issues, he has published a number of legal articles on First Amendment issues pertaining to the military as well as the field of national security and war crimes. In 2009, he became a prosecutor in the Military Commission for the terrorism and war crimes suspects detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Richard Patrick Zuley is a former homicide detective in the United States who had a 37-year career in the Chicago Police Department. He is most known for obtaining confessions from suspects by torture. Since the early 2000s, some of these convictions have been investigated and overturned as wrongful, following allegations that he had tortured and/or framed suspects. Since 2013 he has been the subject of several civil suits from inmates claiming abuse and frame-ups to gain convictions.

Lathierial Boyd is an African-American man from Chicago who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1990 and served 23 years in prison. His appeals were turned down. An investigation by WGN-TV television in 2001 helped document new evidence in his case.

<i>The Mauritanian</i> 2021 legal drama film directed by Kevin Macdonald

The Mauritanian is a 2021 legal drama film based on the memoir of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man who was held from 2002 to 2016 without charge in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a United States military prison. The film was directed by Kevin Macdonald based on a screenplay written by M.B. Traven, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani, adapted from Slahi's 2015 memoir Guantánamo Diary. It stars Tahar Rahim as Slahi, and also features Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Zachary Levi in supporting roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Hollander</span> American lawyer

Nancy Hollander is an American criminal defense lawyer best known for representing two Guantanamo Bay detainees, as well as Chelsea Manning. She was portrayed by actress Jodie Foster in the 2021 film The Mauritanian, about the case of her client Mohamedou Ould Slahi.

References

  1. 1 2 "The Reminiscences of V. Stuart Couch" (PDF). Columbia Center for Oral History Research . Columbia University. 2012. Retrieved March 12, 2021. My birthdate is April 20, 1965.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Jess Bravin (March 31, 2007). "The Conscience of the Colonel". Wall Street Journal . Retrieved April 11, 2007.
  3. ↑ Jess Bravin (March 31, 2007). "The Conscience of the Colonel". mirror of the Wall Street Journal article. Retrieved April 11, 2007.
  4. 1 2 "Three tales of Gitmo 'taint'". Monterey Herald. April 7, 2007. Retrieved April 11, 2007.[ permanent dead link ]
  5. 1 2 "Board of Immigration Appeals". www.justice.gov. January 13, 2015.
  6. ↑ Laverty, James LaPorta, Rory (February 7, 2018). "A Few Not So Good Men: Marine Pilots, a Massacre, Immunity". The Daily Beast– via www.thedailybeast.com.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. 1 2 "Marine Gets 6 Months in Gondola Case". Los Angeles Times. May 11, 1999.
  8. ↑ "Court record" (PDF). cases.justia.com. Retrieved March 12, 2021.
  9. 1 2 "Info" (PDF). static1.squarespace.com. Retrieved March 12, 2021.
  10. 1 2 Dao, James (September 15, 2001). "Marines Reprimand 2 Officers in Osprey Case (Published 2001)". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
  11. ↑ "Osprey Officer Backs Out". www.cbsnews.com.
  12. ↑ "Top Marines In Osprey Cover-Up?". www.cbsnews.com.
  13. ↑ Ricks, Thomas E. (January 31, 2003). "Two Marines Arrested In Parachute Sabotage" – via www.washingtonpost.com.
  14. ↑ "National Briefing | South: North Carolina: Marine Reaches Plea Deal In Sabotage Case (Published 2003)". The New York Times. Associated Press. July 26, 2003 – via NYTimes.com.
  15. ↑ Estes Thompson. "Marine who cut parachute lines sentenced to 20 years". Wilmington Star News. Associated Press.[ permanent dead link ]
  16. ↑ "Leave Your Morals at the Border". Archived from the original on May 17, 2007. Retrieved April 11, 2007.
  17. ↑ ""Colonel with a Conscience" by Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)". Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved April 11, 2007.
  18. ↑ [ dead link ]
  19. ↑ "Virginia Law Weekly". Virginia Law Weekly.
  20. ↑ SPIEGEL, SPIEGEL Staff, DER (October 9, 2008). "From Germany to Guantanamo: The Career of Prisoner No. 760". Der Spiegel.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. ↑ "The Mauritanian | Official Movie Website | In Theaters And On Demand Everywhere Now". The Mauritanian | Official Movie Website | In Theaters And On Demand Everywhere Now.
  22. ↑ "'The Mauritanian': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. January 12, 2021.
  23. ↑ "U.S. Marine lawyer barred from testifying". United Press International . November 8, 2007. Archived from the original on July 29, 2007. Retrieved November 8, 2007.
  24. ↑ Laurie Kellman (November 8, 2007). "Waterboarding is torture, ex-Navy interrogator says". Houston Chronicle . Archived from the original on May 21, 2011. Retrieved November 8, 2007.
  25. 1 2 "House Panel Gets Earful On Waterboarding: In Spite Of Bickering In D.C., Experts Say Interrogation Method Is Torture, Must Never Be Used". CBS News. November 8, 2007. Retrieved November 8, 2007.
  26. ↑ "NMCCA | U.S. Navy JAG Corps". www.jag.navy.mil. Archived from the original on October 16, 2020. Retrieved February 6, 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.