Stuhff seemed distracted by the defeat and agreed to let Major Henderson take over.
Lonetree had been convicted on Friday, the sentencing hearing was set for Monday, and on Saturday morning Henderson had Sgt. Clayton Lonetree brought from the brig to his office in the basement of Lejeune Hall to prepare him to testify. At this point it was a given that Lonetree was going to jail; the question was for how long.
In an attempt to minimize the time the jury decided Lonetree’s crimes were worth, Henderson wanted to present his client as a remorseful figure. For several hours they ran through a gamut of questions—from the circumstances of his birth and the tragedy of growing up in a broken home, to his aspirations when he joined the Marine Corps, to his decision to come forward and confess. After they had spent several hours perfecting his answers, Henderson asked what he expected would be his final question. “Clayton, looking back at this now, after all these months, how do you feel?”
The obvious answer, the one he was expecting to hear, was, “I’m really sorry. I screwed up. I deserve to be punished for what I did.”
What Lonetree said was, “I really don’t think I did enough for the Russians.”
Henderson frowned. What the hell did that mean? He didn’t think he’d done enough to be punished severely? He wished he’d done more?
God only knew. But what that meant to Henderson was he couldn’t put his client on the stand. Who knew what would come out of his mouth? He was unpredictable, uncontrollable. He’d murder himself in front of a jury.
In the military there was an option of allowing an accused to make an unsworn statement that could not be subjected to cross-examination. By necessity the range of his testimony would be restricted, but Henderson felt the risks of putting Lonetree on the stand were too great. Major Beck would carve him up. What Henderson wanted to accomplish now was simply to personalize Lonetree for the jury. The prosecution had made him out to be the worst thing to happen to this country since Benedict Arnold, Henderson wanted the members to hear his voice, get a better sense of him as a human being, and, he hoped, bring them to the same understanding that he had of Sgt. Clayton Lonetree: that he as not an Indian militant bent on taking revenge on America; he was a confused young man whose ideological inclinations, if they could be called that, were the emotional outcome of his personality, and the government had mixed up personal disorientation with principled betrayal.
When the sentencing hearing was called to order the following Monday, Major Henderson put on two witnesses. The first person he called to the stand was Lt. Comdr. Forrest Sherman, the brig psychologist who had met informally with Lonetree for months. He asked Sherman if, based on their conversations, he had formed any opinions concerning the reasons why Sergeant Lonetree had gotten into trouble. In reply, the psychologist talked about Lonetree as someone who came from “a very conflicted background with no sense of foundation,” someone with a lot of unmet personal needs who couldn’t feel good about himself unless others thought well of him, a bright young man who was nonetheless sophomoric and lacking in common sense. In summation, he described Clayton Lonetree as a “wise fool.”
Major Henderson then told the court that he would be taking an unsworn statement from Sergeant Lonetree. This was the first time anyone outside the defense team or his family had heard from Sergeant Lonetree since his arrest, and his performance did little to satisfy those who were anxious to hear him talk about how and why he got involved with the Soviets. He spoke softly and haltingly. Much of what he said was mumbled and inaudible. Even the jury members strained to hear his words as he talked about his troubled childhood, his years in an orphanage, his overbearing father: “Every time I done anything, he criticized me. The only time he spoke to me, he was drunk.”
Only at the end of the testimony did Major Henderson touch on issues pertaining to his crimes.
Q. Sergeant Lonetree, before you became an MSG, Marine security guard, did you ever think of becoming a spy?
A. No, sir.
Q. How would you describe the way you felt about Communism at that time?
A. I was a devoted anti-Communist. The reasons why, because of the Marine Corps, I felt they were—as an elite status that we have—they just seemed to have a—actually that is one of the reasons why I didn’t like the Communists. I—Afghanistan, when it was invaded—just somewhat fanatical, anti-Red.
Q. Sergeant Lonetree, are you willing to accept the punishment this court awards?
A. Yes, sir.
Major Henderson had no further questions.
What was left were the closing arguments, and speaking for the prosecution, Maj. Frank Short made a powerful case for a sentence of life imprisonment.
“Since we started a Marine Corps, Marines with problems have served with honor, and very often have died with honor,” he said. “But only one Marine has made the individual decision for which he must take the individual responsibility, the decision to betray his oath, his Corps, and his country…. Part of the job of this court is to set an example for the next two hundred and twelve years, so this won’t happen again.”
Short went on to ask the jury, “in assessing an appropriate sentence, to consider the victims in the case.” By that he meant not simply the security of the United States as a free nation. “It’s important for you to remember, also, even though you haven’t seen them, you haven’t heard from them, to remember the human victims. People who will pay for the rest of their lives the very personal price of having been identified, had their names and their addresses placed on a KGB target list.”
Nearing the end, Short asked the jury, “Remember the dramatic picture Mr. Kunstler painted for you on closing argument for the defense? He warned of the horror that you would experience, of the possibility that some night you might, to use his words, ‘wake up screaming.’ Look at your list of those American patriots that the accused betrayed, and when you deliberate on your sentence, ask yourselves, How many people on that list will some night, somewhere, wake up screaming because of what he did?”
Judge Roberts had given the defense team permission to allow each of the attorneys representing Sergeant Lonetree the chance to speak, and over the weekend William Kunstler had typed out his final words. Major Henderson had received a copy, and when he read it he was dismayed. It was a bitter, vituperative statement that criticized the jury’s verdict on the previous Friday as an example of “the self-protective myopia of the Marine Corps.” Kunstler had written, “You must bear some of the stigma of this tragic proceeding,” which he went on to describe as “an ugly and pathetic charade.” And he chastised the members for their inability “to rise above the hysteria of the moment.”
The morning of the hearing, just before the defense team went into the courtroom, Major Henderson took William Kunstler aside and said, “Bill, if you try and give that statement to the jury at sentencing, I’m warning you, I’m going to get up and I’m going to walk out of the room. I’m not going to ask the judge’s permission, and I’m going to hope the judge yells at me and asks me where I’m going. Because then I’m going to tell him that I think what you’re saying is a bunch of crap. It has nothing to do with our client, and I want this jury to know that I want nothing to do with it.”
At first Kunstler tried to defend himself, but when Henderson wouldn’t budge, he finally conceded. “Okay, I won’t give it.”
But that was before Major Short’s closing, which so incensed Kunstler that he changed his mind. “I’m going ahead with this,” he whispered to his colleagues, and with statement in hand he started to stand up. But he was stopped by the assistant military counsel to the defense, Capt. Andy Strotman, who grabbed Kunstler by the shoulder and slammed him rudely back in his seat.