William Calley
William Laws Calley, Jr. (born June 8, 1943) was the U.S. Army officer who led the March 16, 1968 My Lai Massacre.
Background
By all accounts William Calley came from a normal background. His father was a U.S. Navy veteran. Calley graduated from high school in Miami, Florida. He attended Palm Beach Junior College in 1963 but he did not receive a degree by the time he entered the Army. He was a very poor student whose grades consisted of D's and F's. Calley stood only five foot three inches tall and had no special talents of any kind other then the fact many people who knew him described him as "nice". In fact, after My Lai was revealed, newspapers often described him as "the nice American boy charged with murder". Calley worked at a number of jobs after failing college as a dishwasher, insurance investigator and train conductor. He did not hold any of these for very long either and finally drifted to an aimless existence in San Francisco before being drafted into the United States Army at the height of the Vietnam war in 1966. The young soldier had his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and received advanced individual training as a clerk at Fort Lewis in Washington. Calley then completed Officer Candidate School, was commissioned as a second lieutenant, and began training with Charlie Company at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii before their deployment to the Republic of Vietnam. However, once in combat, Calley was ill-thought of by the members of his platoon. Many told Army investigators he lacked common sense and couldn't even read a map or compass properly. Calley's men admitted he was so disliked some even thought of "fragging" him.
Trial and Aftermath
Calley was charged on September 5, 1969 with six specifications of premeditated murder for the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians near the village of My Lai, at a hamlet called Song My, more commonly called My Lai in the U.S. press. In this well documented incident, 500 villagers, mostly women, children, infants and elderly, were assembled and then shot by soldiers of Charlie Company, Americal Division. Some women who survived were gang raped by U.S. soldiers instead of being summarily executed.
Calley's trial started on November 17, 1969 and resulted in a conviction on March 29, 1971 of premeditated murder of 22 civilians for his role in the massacre. On March 31, 1971 he was sentenced to life in prison.
Testimony revealed that Calley had ordered the men of 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, Americal Division to shoot everyone in the village. Calley claimed that he was following the orders of his immediate superior, Captain Ernest Medina. Whether or not this order was actually given is disputed; Medina was later acquitted of all charges relating to the incident at a separate trial. Of the 26 officers and soldiers initially charged for their participation in the My Lai massacre or the subsequent cover-up, only Calley was convicted.
Calley was seen by some as a scapegoat used by the U.S. Army instead of accepting responsibility for the failure to instill morale and discipline in its troops and commanders. Others, with lack of knowledge about his education or background, sought to excuse his actions because of his allegedly low intelligence and cultural background.
On April 1, only a day after Calley was sentenced, President Richard Nixon ordered him released from prison pending appeal; on August 20, 1971, the convening authority — the Commanding General of Fort Benning — reduced his sentence to 20 years. Next the Army Court of Military Review affirmed the conviction and sentence (46 C.M.R. 1131 (1973)). Next the Secretary of the Army reviewed the sentence and findings and approved both, but in a separate clemency action commuted confinement to ten years. On May 3, 1974, President Nixon notified the Secretary that he had reviewed the case and determined he would take no further action in the matter.
Ultimately, Calley served 3½ years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia. Calley petitioned the federal district court for habeas corpus on Feb. 11, 1974, which was granted on September 25, 1974, along with immediate release, by federal judge J. Robert Elliott. Judge Elliott found that Calley's trial had been prejudiced by pretrial publicity, denial of subpoenas of certain defense witnesses, refusal of the House of Representatives to release testimony taken in executive session of its My Lai investigation, and inadequate notice of the charges. (The judge had released Calley on bail on Feb. 27, 1974, but an appeals court reversed that and returned Calley to Army custody June 13, 1974.)
The Army appealed Judge Elliott's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals (5th Circuit) and asked an appeals judge to stay Calley's immediate release, which was granted; however the full Court upheld the release pending appeal and decided that the entire court would hear the appeal (normally not done in the first instance).
In the event the Army won a reversal of Judge Elliott's habeas corpus grant and reinstatement of the judgment of the court-martial with, however, 5 judges dissenting. (Calley v. Callaway, 519 F.2d 184, 9/10/1975). In a long and extremely detailed careful opinion the reviewing court disagreed with Judge Elliott on the law and significantly on Elliott's too intrusive second-guessing ("scope of review") of the court martial proceeding. The Court noted that although by now Calley had been "paroled" from confinement by the Army, that did not moot the habeas corpus proceedings.
Calley still resides in the Columbus, Georgia area today and is the manager of a local jewelry store.