Reply #43: There Are Many Problems With the Lione You Are Pressing Here, Sir

[The Magistrate]

Chief among them is that whether the Sergeant acted 'carelessly', as you put it, or with deliberate intent 'pour encourager les autres', does not define the difference between lawful and criminal behavior, but only between degrees of criminality. To completely disregard the chance of harming non-combatants, as by his own words he did, is as much a breach of the Geneva Accords as to deliberately kill non-combatants, though not so grave a breach. You are arguing, in effect, that he is guilty of aggravated manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, rather than that he is innocent of any crime.

Appeals to either 'the stress' or 'the situation' do not make much impact on me. If the man was not up to the stress, he was in the wrong position, both in life and in the Corps, and while this would indicate a problem that goes well beyond the Sergeant himself, that does not alter that he failed to behave as a commander should under the stress of combat, and in a manner that broke the Geneva Accords, and not in a momentary lapse, but over a sustained period of time. The situation in which he did this is nothing exculpatory. He concluded first that people he saw in line of sight of the initial explosion had caused it, and then, after a considerable lapse in time, that people in buildings in line of sight of his position had not only caused the explosion, but fired several rounds at his men. Neither of these conclusions were warranted; neither of these conclusions were accurate.

"Poor soul: it appears he was not up to the strain."