Marine A was no Rambo... he was more a John Wayne
His calm manner masked a mind in torment over horrors of war, appeal court told
JAILED Royal Marine Alexander Blackman was ‘not Rambo’ and was suffering from the trauma of war when he shot a wounded Taliban fighter, a court heard yesterday.
Three top psychiatrists said his ‘abnormality of mind’ was a recognised mental illness which had numbed his ‘moral compass’.
This adjustment disorder in Sergeant Blackman – unnoticed and undiagnosed – substantially diminished his responsibility for killing the insurgent and renders his murder conviction unsafe, the Court Martial Appeal Court was told.
Expert witness Dr Philip Joseph said the new psychiatric material went to the very heart of the controversial case, telling the judges: ‘I am saying it is more likely than not that the killing was manslaughter rather than murder.’
Jonathan Goldberg, QC, for Sgt Blackman, said his nature was ‘very reserved – a sort of John Wayne character’.
Dozens of ex-Marines were yesterday among supporters packed into Court 4 of the Royal Courts of Justice for the start of his long-awaited appeal, presided over by five of Britain’s top judges led by the Lord Chief Justice.
Sgt Blackman, also known as Marine A, is believed to be the first British serviceman to be convicted of murder on the battlefield. The Taliban fighter he shot on September 15, 2011, had already been badly wounded by an Apache helicopter gunship as he approached a remote British outpost in Afghanistan.
Sgt Blackman’s patrol found his blood-soaked body in a cornfield, with a grenade and an AK-47 by his side. The commando fired a bullet into the man’s chest, quoting from Hamlet as he said, ‘Shuffle off this mortal coil’, adding: ‘I’ve just broken the Geneva Convention’ in a scene captured on a fellow Marine’s helmet camera.
The veteran commando, 42, appeared via video link from HMP Erlestoke in Wiltshire yesterday as his loyal wife Claire sat in the public gallery surrounded by supporters, including several retired top brass.
The court heard that Sgt Blackman was suffering from burn-out towards the end of a hellish tour of Afghanistan.
Professor Neil Greenberg, a specialist in military mental health at King’s College London, said: ‘Everybody has their breaking point. There is no such thing as a Rambo type, an Arnold Schwarzenegger soldier, who can face all sorts of stresses and appear to be invulnerable.’
He said Sgt Blackman had been described as ‘a husk of his former self’ by a colleague shortly before the shooting. When he was back in the
UK his wife noticed him instinctively scanning the pavements for hidden bombs. On a trip to the theatre, he leapt under his seat when there was a bang.
The new evidence shows Blackman’s self- control had been hampered when he pulled the trigger, as was his ability to judge if the insurgent was alive or dead when he shot him, the court heard.
The appeal is expected to last two to three days. If successful, it could result in his conviction being commuted to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility, which carries a lower prison term, or a retrial. Sgt Blackman’s appeal hinges on evidence that he was under great strain at the time of the killing. Faced with a ‘ruthless and cunning and inhumane enemy who know no rules’, his undermanned unit had lost seven men with 40 more injured as they struggled to fulfil their mission brief to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of Afghan locals, said Mr Goldberg. Blackman himself was nearly killed by two grenades a few weeks before the incident, leaving him with ‘mental scars’.
Mr Goldberg said the conditions in Helmand were ‘austere’ and a ‘breeding ground’ for mental health problems. He played the court a film made by documentary maker Chris Terrill who had been embedded with a unit of Marines three miles away from Sgt Blackman’s, to show the harsh conditions.
‘Only those who have been on the front line can know what it is really like,’ said Mr Goldberg.
Blackman has always maintained he thought the insurgent was dead and he shot him in anger, believing he had desecrated a corpse, to explain his comment about the Geneva Convention.
Professor Greenberg said Blackman’s ‘moral compass’ had been numbed. He said: ‘There is no other explanation for his behaviour to what is seen on the video other than adjustment-disorder impairing his ability to form a rational judgment.’
A second psychiatrist, Dr Michael Orr, backed up Professor Greenberg’s findings, and then Dr Joseph was hired to critique their work.
Dr Joseph, brought in by the independent Criminal Cases Review Commission when it was investigating a possible miscarriage of justice, gave ‘strong’ backing to the other two experts.
They agreed that Blackman – consistently rated a ‘superb soldier’ in his appraisals – behaved so out of character as on the day of the killing to suggest there was ‘something going wrong in his head’, it was said.
Sgt Blackman was proud of the Marines’ ‘macho image’ and his mental problems went ‘undetected and untreated’.
The Crown’s QC Richard Whittam, representing the Director of Service Prosecutions, said the murder conviction was safe. He said the psychiatrists’ reports were ‘not capable’ of showing Sgt Blackman had an adjustment disorder, and even if he was, it was not substantial enough to cause the killing.
The case continues.