Soldier pleads not guilty in fragging case

Soldier pleads not guilty in fragging case
By Suzan Clarke • The Journal News • August 23, 2008


A soldier accused of killing two superior officers in Iraq, one of whom was from Suffern, pleaded not guilty yesterday.

Army Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez entered the plea during an Article 39(a) proceeding - the equivalent of a civilian court's pretrial hearing - at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Martinez, 40, of Troy, N.Y., is charged with two counts of premeditated murder in the June 2005 deaths of Capt. Phillip Esposito, 30, of Suffern, his company commander, and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, 34, of Milford, Pa., second in command of the 42nd Infantry Division's headquarters support company in Tikrit, Iraq.

Martinez is accused of rigging and detonating a claymore mine on Esposito's window the night of June 7, 2005. Allen was in the room with Esposito. Both men died of their injuries the next day.

Military judge Col. Stephen Henley made a number of rulings during yesterday's hearing.

Among them, he deferred to a defense request that Martinez be moved from his current holding facility to another location, but left the final decision up to the facility commander.

The defense had argued that the suspect's current confinement location was "suppressive," according to a Fort Bragg media release detailing the results of the hearing.

The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer reported that Martinez's attorneys argued their client's solitary confinement at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C., was unduly stressful.
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