The government is asking the military's highest court to reconsider its ruling last month that overturned a murder conviction of a Marine who has served six years in the brig for one of the biggest war crime cases to emerge from the Iraq war.
Prosecutors argued in a motion filed to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on Monday that it should reinstate the conviction of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III of Plymouth, Mass.
The judges supported Hutchins' claims that his rights were violated when he was held in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer for seven days during his 2006 interrogation in Iraq.
Prosecutors say Hutchins waived his right to counsel at the time and willfully told his side of the story without being badgered or coerced.
Miramar Brig was where Hutchins spent most of his time behind bars.Hutchins led an eight-man squad accused ofkidnapping a retired Iraqi policeman
from his home in April 2006, marching him to a ditch and shooting him to death in Hamdania.
The squad's other members served less than 18 months.
