The small courtroom tucked into the northern tip of Camp Pendleton, a sprawling Marine base near San Diego, looked brand new. Its white walls smelled of fresh paint, its oak benches were at high gloss, its overactive air conditioner kept lawyers chilled and awake. Yet despite the newness of the setting, the alleged crime the U.S. government was prosecuting on July 16 was as old as war itself.
The government had “preferred charges” against Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Division, for the “unpremeditated murder” of two civilians, both Iraqi children, and the negligent homicide of four other Iraqi civilians, among them a woman and a 4-year-old boy. A native of Edmund, Okla., Tatum who was 25 at the time of the incident, faces life imprisonment if convicted. His alleged war crimes were part of a larger investigation into the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq, on Nov. 19, 2005, after an improvised explosive device (IED) killed one Marine and wounded two others.
