Court overturns murder conviction

SAN DIEGO — The military’s highest court overturned a murder conviction Wednesday against a Camp Pendleton Marine in one of the most significant cases against American troops from the Iraq war.

The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces threw out the conviction of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, of Plymouth Mass., who has served about half of his 11-year sentence.

According to the ruling posted on the court’s website, the judges agreed with Hutchins who claimed that his constitutional rights were violated when he was held in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer for seven days during his interrogation in Iraq.

Hutchins led an eightman squad accused of kidnapping a retired Iraqi policeman from his home in April 2006, marching him to a ditch and shooting him to death in the village of Hamdania.

None of the other 7 members of the squad served more than 18 months.