Previously on In the Dark. Oh my God.

Sherry was... He was a goof ball. He was very much into the pop punk. So like the sum 41, blink 182. That was his shtick. He loved that stuff.

He said, I popped your nine mils cherry. What did you think when he said that? What did I think? I assumed it meant that he had fucking shot someone with it..

They just came out one after one, and they all stood there on their grandfather's front yard.

You and you and you.

You and you. They pointed at each one to go inside the house. I have saying that this Marine who's claiming that that this was his truth. She said that he knows the truth as she knows it. She doesn't care at all what he says.

One day, just before Christmas in 2006, a little over a year after the killings, a Marine colonel took the podium in a drab briefing room at Camp Pendleton. On the morning of 19 November, 2005, a four-vehicle convoy of Marines was moving through Haditha. The colonel told the press gathered in front of him that the investigations into what had happened were nearly complete. Based on the findings In the sense of the investigations, various charges have been preferred against four Marines relating to the deaths of the Iraqi civilians on 19 November, 2005. These charges include murder. Murder charges against four Marines brought the US military itself within its own justice system. That's the way war crimes, for the most part, are handled in the US, in-house. The first case to move through the military courts was the one against Lance Corporal Justin Sheret, the squad's gunner, who bragged about killing people punisher-style. Sheret was charged for what had happened in that final house, where the four brothers were all shot in the head. Sheret was charged with killing three of the men. Sheret's story about what had happened inside that house was dramatic. He described for investigators how he and his squad leader, Frank Wutterrich, had gone into the house and had been confronted inside by armed insurgents.

Sherritt had said that his assault weapon jammed, so he quickly drew his nine-millimetre pistol and shot the men to save his own life. The Iraqi story of what had happened was so different from Sherritt's that the two accounts were almost irreconcilable. The surviving relatives had told us the Marines marched the their unarmed brothers away. Then they heard gunshots. They ran into the house and found the brothers Jamal, Khatan, Chaseb, and Marwan, lying dead. These two stories would collide in a public forum, a courtroom. From there, they would wind their way through the opaque inner workings of the military justice system. They would climb up a hierarchy of men who'd each judgment until they reached a top commander who would decide which story was true. This is Season 3 of In the Dark, an investigative podcast from The New Yorker. This season is about the killing of 24 men, women, and children by US Marines in Haditha, Iraq. It's a story not just about the killings themselves, but also about the failure of the US military to bring the men responsible for them to justice. In this episode, we're going to start with the prosecution of Justin Sheret, the first case to fall apart.

It's collapse would shake the foundations of all the Haditha cases to follow. This is episode 7, Innocent in My Eyes. Justin Sherritt's case began the way almost all serious military prosecutions do, with something called an Article 32 hearing. It's unique to the military justice system. Defendants get to have a pre-trial where both sides can present evidence to determine whether the case should go forward to a jury. The person who presides over the hearing and weighs all that evidence is a judge called an investigating officer. The way it worked in murder cases back then is the investigating officer would make a recommendation to a commander as to whether the case should go any further. Sherritt's Article 32 hearing happened at Camp Pendleton in June 2007. Newspapers across the country printed photos of Sherritt's arrival at the courthouse. He was escorted by his lawyers in their dark suits. Sherritt was wearing his combat fatigues, sleeves rolled up to his biceps, big black aviator glasses covering his eyes. Sherritt carried a binder and a stack of case documents so thick, he could barely wrap his hands around them. As for what happened inside the courtroom, that was a little tricky to figure out because the military hasn't given us records of the hearing.

Fortunately, we did end up finding unofficial transcripts on a now defunct web page that was archived online. In reading through those transcripts, it was clear prosecutors had a lot of evidence against Sherritt. There were the forensics and the photos showing that one of the men had been shot after jumping into a wardrobe and another man had been shot while sitting or crashing on the ground. There was the fact that all four men had been shot in the head. None of this was what you'd expect to see in a life or death fight against armed enemies. There were details about who these men were, that there was no evidence that any of them had any connections to insurgents, and that, in fact, they all had regular jobs. One worked at a car dealership, one was a government engineer, one worked as a customs officer on the border with Jordan, and one was a traffic officer. Then, of course, there was the most powerful evidence of all, eyewitness testimony, the thing that every prosecutor wants in a criminal case. People who saw what happened, who weren't themselves involved in the crime. Ehab, Najma, and Khaled Jamal said they'd witnessed the Marines taking the four brothers away unarmed and then heard gunshots.

These Iraqi witnesses had given statements where they recounted all this in detail. The job of Sherritt's lawyers, of course, was to call all of this evidence into question. And that's exactly what they did. Those jobs the brothers had, car dealer, engineer, customs worker, traffic officer, those, according to the defense, gave the men a grab bag of skills and resources that actually made them a, quote, ideal insurgent sell, a village people of the insurgency. But what to do about the eyewitness statements? The ones that absolutely contradicted Sherritt's account that these men had pointed AK-47s at them so they had to kill them. Sherrod's lawyers brought in an expert witness to cast doubt on those statements. His name is Barack Salmoni. Salmoni work for the Marine Corps, training Marines on Iraqi culture, and he has a doctorate in history and Middle East studies. On the stand, Salmoni testified about why he thought the statements of the Iraqi witnesses Ehab, Najma, and Khaled Jamal, might not be credible. He noted that though they did give sworn statements, they weren't asked to swear an oath on the Quran itself. He suggested that because the interviews were conducted by outsiders, by non-Muslims, The witnesses might have felt less compulsion to tell the truth.

But what stood out to me the most about Salmoni's testimony was what he had to say about the value of the testimony of the Iraqi women in particular. Salmoni testified that in Muslim society, traditionally, the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. He cautioned he wasn't necessarily saying that the testimony was half as truthful, but he did say that maybe it was less significant. We wanted to ask Salmoni about all this, and so our producer, Samara, called him up. Go ahead.

Is this Dr. Salmoni? Yeah, this is he, yes. This is Samara Fremark, the audio reporter for the New Yorker.

Salmoni told Samara he stood by what he said in the hearing.

I didn't find the testimony of the Iraqis to be credible or reliable.

Samara asked Salmoni about one of his claims in particular.

There actually was one specific thing in your testimony. I was hoping you could explain to me. I just want to make sure I was understanding it, and it has to do with the value of women and men's testimonies in Muslim societies.

First read what I said, please.

Yeah, of course. Additionally, there is a question about the worth of testimony of females, not in our society, but in traditional Muslim societies.

Samara read back to Salmoni what he'd said at the hearing, the part where he said that in Muslim society, traditionally, the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man.

You say I am not saying they're half as truthful as man, maybe. They may be less familiar and less significant in their testimony. I was hoping you could just explain where that's coming from.

Salmoni seemed almost embarrassed. This is a while ago, right? Of course. This is 2006, correct?

Long time ago, right?

Hopefully, a little bit more mature than them then. Just less hair. But defended what he'd said in court. Okay. Traditionally in Sharia, across the different mazahid, it's not like it was worth half.

If I understand correctly, the testimony of two women was equal to that of one man, right?

Samara wondered if it was right, so she checked with two experts in Islamic law, experts from outside the Marine Corps, a professor at the University of Cincinnati's Law School, Dr. Haider Ala Hamoudi. It borders on the outrageous. And Dr. Mohamed Fadel at the University of Toronto's Law School. That would be a complete misapplication of any Islamic legal doctrine. They both said the legal concept Somoni was referencing is essentially an arcane provision of Islamic law dating to medieval times, typically applied to contracts, completely inapplicable in this context. It's very poorly done by someone who, I'll say it strongly, clearly doesn't know a lot about contemporary Iraqi or contemporary Arab society, to draw the kinds of conclusions that he does. But back at the Article 32 hearing, Simoni's testimony went mostly unchallenged. Towards the end of the hearing, Sheret himself read a statement. He said that it had been his lifelong dream to enlist in the Marines. He talked about a love of country, duty, brotherhood, bravery. He gave a dramatic retelling of an intense battle in a different city, Falluja, inside a building that came to be known as Hell House, where Sherritt said he tried to save his fellow Marines from a deadly ambush and saw his friend's head explode, almost in slow motion, right in front of him.

When he turned to the events of November 19th, 2005, Sherritt made it sound like he'd ended up in another Hell House. Blow by blow, he described defeating a pack of insurgents who'd wanted him dead. I am a disciplined Marine, he said, and I've always tried to act professionally with a civilian population. On November 19th, I did exactly as I was trained to do. He went on, In the end, no matter how much I second-guess myself, I would not change any of the decisions I made that day. The person whose job it was to listen to all this evidence and make a recommendation about what to do with it was a Marine Lieutenant Colonel named Paul Ware. Ware was what the military calls an investigating officer. His job was to oversee the hearing and then write a report about it and make a recommendation to the commander of Sherritt's unit about whether the case should go to an actual trial before a jury. Ware had never handled a war crimes case before, and now he was at the center of one of the largest war crimes cases in US history. Ware was supposed to be a neutral party, but as I read over the transcripts of the Article 32 hearing, there was something that stood out to me in the way Ware had questioned some of the people on the stand.

He seemed skeptical of the prosecution and sympathetic to the defense. Sometimes he almost seemed like another defense attorney. Like when a friend of Sherritt's testified, a Marine named James Prentis. Prentis was a particularly interesting witness. He was a close friend of Sherritt's, and the prosecutors brought him to the hearing because of what Prentis had told investigators. Prentis had said that he knew Sherritt's story about what happened inside that house wasn't true. Prentis said Sherritt had confided in him that he'd made up the story about encountering insurgents armed with AK-47s. It was all a cover story, a fiction. That was what Prentis told the investigators. But when he testified at Sherritt's hearing, Prentis walked it all back. Prentis testified that actually Sherritt hadn't said it. And then where the supposedly neutral arbiter, suggested something quite helpful for the defense. Then maybe one of the military's own investigators had inserted this detail into Prentis' statement. Where would go on to be the investigating officer for two more Haditha Marines, Stephen Tatum and Frank Wutterrich. And prosecutors in those cases would end up sending letters to the commander written in concerned tones. Prosecutors wrote that Ware had made factual and legal errors.

One pointed out that Ware lacked significant operational law experience, training or education, and lacked any experience with rules of engagement and escalation of force investigations in Iraq. As far as we could tell, Paul Ware had never given an interview about his role in the Haditha cases. But one evening, our producer, Samara, drove out to Ware's house to see if he might talk to her. She brought along the 18-page report that Ware had written at the end of Sherritt's hearing. We'll be back after the break. Hey, it's Madelyne. If you're a fan of In the Dark, and you love long-form storytelling, and you've listened to all the serialized investigative podcasts, and you've already watched Everything Good on Netflix, there is a wealth of stories you're going to love waiting for you at The New Yorker. This story, published just this year by Patrick Radden Keef, about a teen who got mixed up in the London underworld and then mysteriously fell into the Thames. In the four years since Zack's death, the family has had to confront the extent to which the boy they thought they knew had been living a double existence. None of the Brettlers had ever imagined that Zack might be moving about London, pretending to be someone else altogether.

This season of In the Dark took us four years to report. You're hearing it now because The New Yorker believes in what we do. So go to newyorker. Com/dark and become a subscriber today. That's newyorker. Com/dark. In 600 feet, your destination will be on the left. Paul Ware is retired from the military now. He lives in San Diego in a nice-looking colonial-style house. When Samara got there, Ware's wife came to the door.

Do you want to go there?

I was trying to Mr. Paul Ware. Yes. What can I do for you, for him? I'm a reporter, and I'm working on a story about a case that he was a judge on many, many, many years ago.

I don't think he's interested in making a comment.

Could I talk to him directly to hear that? Could. He's on a work call right now. He's on a work call right now.

Yeah. So not sure how... I don't know what- Smara could see Ware pacing around in the background, talking on a cell phone. He's been on this call for a while. After a few minutes, he came to the door.

What can I do for you?

Wherere was wearing a Marine shirt, and his gray hair was reminiscent of a classic Marine's high and tight, buzzed on the side, a touch longer on top.

What is it you're trying to accomplish?

Yeah, so I'm looking back on the Haditha case, and it was this huge thing. And so it's a look back on what happened.

Well, I don't think you'll ever know what happens because if you looked at any of my reports, the problem is- Could we sit? Could we? Yeah.

Ware led Samara into a study and pulled out a folding chair for her.

I got this chair. Oh, thank you. Tell me how you came to the case.

I didn't come to the case. I was a judge in Hawaii.

Back at the time, Ware was working as a military judge in Hawaii.

I got a call. They said that they had a case set of Haditha, and they wanted a judge.

Ware packed his bags and headed for Camp Pendleton in San Diego.

It was a good opportunity for me to come back to California. My family was in California.

Where he stepped into his role as the investigating officer on Sherritt's case.

What was your general impression of the evidence in the case?

I think a lot of people think, Oh, these are just Marines that went out with revenge. I think it was the narrative that the government was using. They went out for revenge after seeing their friends killed. That wasn't my take on it.

Samara wanted to ask Ware about how he weighed the evidence in the case, the two stories that had been put in front of him. Sherritt The spirit story of facing down a pack of insurgents, and the Iraqi story of unarmed men being led to their deaths.

You've got these two different stories. They're very different. How do you weigh those two testimonies? How do you assess who you think is telling the truth?

Well, there's no one telling the other side. There's no what? There's no one telling the other side.

Ware said the only eyewitness that day were the Marines. He said no one else actually saw what happened.

You're dealing with spouses of the victims or family members of the who aren't in the room. And so they describe an aftermath.

Samara pushed back on this. Najma, Ehab, Khaled Jamal had described witnessing the Marines marching their unarmed family members into the house where they were shot.

They were My witnesses to the scene that they claimed happened.

Right. If you believe them.

If you believe them. Yes.

I didn't. And if you ever read the transcripts, I don't speak Farsi, and the interpreter is Arabic. I'm not sure what... And so they're reinterpreting it and telling us what they said. I didn't find their testimony to be particularly credible.

So why do you think those people were lying? What's their incentive?

I don't know that they're lying. I would say that I don't think that their version of what they're saying is very credible. Why does someone have a need to not tell the truth? Is there an incentive to not tell the truth, or is there any reason why someone wouldn't tell the truth? One of the reasons they wouldn't tell the truth, they got payments.

Ware was talking about the money that the survivors had received from the US military to compensate for the loss of their four family members, what the military calls condolence payments. Us, $2,500 for each death.

They've been paid off, and they don't want to give the money back.

Ware was suggesting that the survivors were worried about the possibility of their condolence payment being clawed back. I've never heard of such a thing happening. The condolence payments weren't contingent on a conviction. They were part of a huge program set up by the US military that paid out millions of dollars over the course of the war for death and destruction caused by US forces in Iraq. Weir also told Samara that he He felt that the fact that the women were interviewed together by NCIS investigators rather than separately, cast doubt on their credibility because he said they might have felt they needed to have the same story. Samara turned to a section of Weir's report that she especially wanted to ask him about. It had to do with the testimony of the defense's Middle East expert, Barack Salmoni. Salmoni had said that in Muslim society, traditionally, the testimony of a woman was worth half that of a man.

Okay, so you write, Salmoni opined that women and children's statements are considered inherently less reliable than a man's statement in Iraqi law. Although such discrimination is not- It appeared that in his report, Ware had taken the statement from Salmoni and run with it.

Ware had written, Although such discrimination is not recognized in our society, the fact that these Iraqis have this cultural understanding suggests that they would believe United States authorities would likewise view their statements as less reliable and may suggest they would feel less need to be fully truthful. We're seem to be advancing a convoluted theory that if in Iraq, women's testimony isn't taken as seriously as men's, then women in Iraq don't feel like they need to tell the the truth. And so therefore, women in Iraq don't tell the truth. It appeared to be an incredibly long-winded way of saying, Don't believe Iraqi women. We read this section of Wair's report to one of the experts in Middle Eastern law we spoke to. He called it a mistaken understanding, built upon a mistaken understanding. It was, he said, a bit of a mess. Samara wanted to find out from where himself why he wrote these lines and what he was thinking.

So I I just want to make sure I understand what you were saying with that.

I don't know how I can make you understand. You read it and understand it. I'm not sure what you mean.

It seems to me that you're saying that we should trust the testimony of women less or of Iraqi women less because of their cultural context. I mean, I just don't know how- No, I'm not saying that at all.

That's absolutely insane. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that they have that understanding. And I say may suggest to them that they're not going to be taken as serious. That's what I'm saying.

Well, you say they may suggest they would feel less need to be fully truthful. I mean, it seems like you're speaking directly to their- They may feel less need to be fully truthful.

These are not American women who grew up in a culture that says, Hey, you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and then you're taken, and your credibly is not analyzed on your gender, but it's analyzed on what you have to say. If I was told that in my testimony is worth half of that of a man, and that's the world I grew up in, I would not believe that another country is going to take my word one for one, that I'm not going to be able to speak with my voice and clarity. I don't know if those five women, if one of them has a different version of the facts, but wouldn't speak it out because they have to be collectively with other people. Because I think that they're being manipulated into a narrative.

But the story they tell is very detailed and also very specific. I've actually talked to some of them, and they're telling the same story now. It's like, why would they be lying to me?

Because you're very naive if you think that why were they... Very detailed, full memory under the trauma of that event. They got together and they talked about it and they built in this narrative. And so now at this point, they could probably raise their hand and say this is what they believe that happened 100 %. Because the more you talk about it and you get these details down and you coalesce those details with other people, and then you embed it in your mind and now you have a memory of what's going on.

Yeah, I think the thing that struck me the most was there was a boy who was 14 at the time. He describes, and he has described this in statements in the past as well, he describes the separation scene. He describes the men being taken away, and he describes trying to go with them and his aunt pulling him back and saying, No, no, no. Today, you don't go with them. You're a boy today. You're not a man. It's just such a specific... It just feels like such a weird thing to just fabricate.

Really?

To what end?

Why? Because at this point, you don't think after all these times, you don't hate American Marines? The Marines didn't go around spreading peace of love there. They went and killed all the family members.

They don't seem like they hate.

I know that you've bought Hook, Line, and Syncer, the other version of it. Hey, you haven't been out there with carrying a rifle and killing their villages. They're going as a reporter, and you are a tool that they can use to exact their revenge or their thing.

Did you put any value on the testimony of the Iraqis?

On the women that told... No.

In his report, Ware recommended that the case go no further. That all the charges against Sheret be dropped. Ware wrote that believing the statements of Najah, Ehab, Khaled Jamal, and their other relatives, Sets a dangerous precedent and might, encourage others to bear false witness against Marines. And though he noted, I suspect Lance Corporal Sheret has not been entirely truthful concerning all the events on 19 November, 2005, Ware chose to accept the account of the person who, if he was guilty of murder, had a bigger incentive than anyone to lie. Ware wrote, Ultimately, there was only one statement by an eyewitness to the events. Lance Corporal, share it. I wondered if Ehab and Najla, whose husbands had both been killed November 19th, had any idea what Paul Weer had written about them, or that their statements had been dismissed so completely. When Samara and I were in Iraq with our interpreter, Aya, meeting with Ehab and Najla in Erbil, I told them about Weir's report. And so there was a report that was written by a person who was in charge of making a recommendation about whether or not Sheret should be charged for the killing of your family.

And so what this report said, what this And this person named Paul Ware, who wrote the report, what he said was that he doubted that the family was telling the truth, and he thought that the family might have said it because they wanted money. And he said that in Iraq, women and children's testimony is less trustworthy.

. Oh, my God. This is so hard..

As I. I think Najla is not feeling well.

She's heartbroken. She said that I feel like I'm dying, basically, of hearing this.........

For much of the interview, Najel had been quiet. Ehab had been doing most of the talking. But now, all her emotion just came out.

..

Nasha spoke for a long time..

I will I'll probably listen to that later on and translate it for you. They are hard... We are all heartbroken right now. I'm sorry.

Aya had been working with us for several days at this point, spending many hours a day translating a lot of things that were hard to listen to. And in this moment, it was like Aya hit her limit.

She is so devastated. So am I? Just only for hearing her struggles. Just hearing about it makes me so Great.

Should we take? Yeah, let's take it.

We'll have to take just a few minutes for a break. Okay.

Later, we got what Najla said, translated. My life was ruined, Najla told us. I was totally destroyed. You know how many plans we had for our life? Our life was beautiful. We had plans for our son. I had plans to complete my studies, to finish my university degree, but I couldn't. I had to think of my son. My nerves broke down, but I remained silent for my son's sake. I didn't want him to see me crying. The man who wrote this, she said, Should face me alone. We'll be back after the break. I'm Dan Tabersky, In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was at my locker, and she came up to me, and she was stuttering super bad. I'm like, Stop running around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

Well, you were holding something back intentionally.

Yeah. Well, yeah. No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateland, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wundery and Pineable Street studios, Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

A quirk of the military justice system, a system with many, many quirks, is that important decisions in criminal cases are often made not by judges or even by lawyers, but by commanders, essentially by the defendant's boss or boss's boss, or in the case of Sheret, his boss's boss's boss's boss's boss Riggs. So Where's Report wasn't the final word. The Commander's would be. And on its way to the Commander, Sherritt's case had to be reviewed by another lawyer, a Lieutenant Colonel named Bill Riggs. Riggs was the Commander's staff lawyer. He gave guidance on all sorts of legal matters, and Riggs was required to weigh in on criminal cases to write up a letter of advice so his boss could have two independent opinions on the evidence. In practice, these advice letters are often brief, flatly written, unemotional. Riggs's letter, which we found buried in some of the court records we sued the government to get, was the exact opposite. Riggs eviscerated Ware's analysis. He underlined a variety of contradictions and fallacies. He criticized Ware for choosing to believe Sherritt's account over all others, even though Ware himself had noted that he suspected Sherritt had, not been entirely truthful.

Riggs argued that disputed facts deserve to be put before a jury. Riggs advised his boss, the commander, to reject Ware's recommendations. Instead, he wrote, Share it, should be tried for murder. Our producer, Samara, talked briefly to Riggs. He's now a judge at a federal agency. He was friendly when she showed up at his house, but said he wouldn't grant an interview. Before Samara left, though, Riggs did, very concisely, get his opinion of Paul Ware on the record. Samara mentioned that she'd recently talked to Ware, and Riggs responded with a single word, Dipset. Riggs' recommendation and Ware's recommendation. One arguing to send the case to trial, the other to drop it, both landed on the desk of the man who would decide what to do next. The man who would make this decision was the head of Marine Corps Forces Central Command, a general in charge of 65,000 Marines. Americans, who later became very famous as a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet, General James Mattis. Mattis was already a mythic figure in military circles. He prided himself on being a free thinker, impervious to the opinions of others. He was known as Mad Dog, Warrior Monk, and Chaos, his radio call sign.

A biographer described him as seemingly defying basic human needs, surviving on four hours of sleep a night, drinking only water, eating freeze-dried meals without warming them or rehydrating them, reading the works of Roman emperors in his spare time. In a memoir Mattis wrote years later, he described his review of the Haditha case file, pouring over it alone night after night, more than 9,000 pages, which he noted was the equivalent of two dozen books. Two months after Sherritt's Article 32 hearing, Mattis issued his decision in the form of a letter addressed to Sherritt, but clearly intended for a wider audience. I have determined that the charges in your case will be dismissed, Mattis wrote. I have made this decision based upon all of the evidence. I've seen other decisions by commanders, and most would have ended there. But Mattis's continued on, veering away from the evidence in the case and towards something more like a short treatise on courage for weary troops. Mattis wrote about the brutal reality of being a Marine at war and As quoted Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the face of an uplifted knife. Mattis told Sherritt, You willingly put yourself at great risk to protect innocent civilians.

Where the enemy disregards any attempt to comply with ethical norms of warfare, we exercise discipline and restraint to protect the innocent caught on the battlefield. Our way is right, but it is also difficult. With the dismissal of these charges, Mattis wrote, you may fairly conclude that you did your best to live up to the standards followed by US fighting men throughout our many wars in the face of life or death decisions made by you in a matter of seconds in combat. You remain, in the eyes of the law, and in my eyes, innocent.

We got the letter and read it and looked at each other and said, Well, what we said probably is not a printable matter.

That's Sherrod's defense attorney, Gary Myers. He's 80 now and semi-retired after a 54-year career. But when our reporter, Parker, talked to him, he had no trouble remembering the moment he got Mattis's letter.

We were delighted I did.

And you said that you and the other attorney exchanged some words that weren't fit to print. What are the words that lawyers share at that moment?

Well, I think words to the effect. I'm even hesitant. I said, Holy shit, this is amazing.

Myers called Sherrod and his family and shared the good news.

He was pleased, obviously. His reaction was not as abusive as his mother, father, sister. They were hectic. They have a sense of relief knowing this thing is behind you.

Myers had been working as a defense attorney for members of the military for a long time. He'd represented other alleged war criminals, a guard from Abu Ghraib, even a radio operator from Mealy. And this letter was unusual.

To have someone in a menace's position declare not only that you're not going forward with the proceedings, but, Oh, by the way, I believe you are absolutely innocent. That's really fairly remarkable.

Have you ever had another case in which an investigating officer or a judge or a convening authority, anyone, has in deemed your client, quote, innocent?

Never. Never. It's just not the idea of innocence is not a concept that is even thought about in criminal settings. Not guilty is not innocent.

It is a word you don't often hear in a criminal court context.

Well, you hear it, but from people who don't understand what they're saying.

Do you think Mattis understood?

Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that that was a message he sent. Mattis is a quintessential Marine in the sense of being a warrior. And he's a guy who I think, truly loves the Marine Corps and the people in it. And he wasn't about to allow an injustice to stand. And the best way to do that was declare that there was no crime here. Case is over.

The end of Sherritt's case also meant the end of any accountability for what happened to the Four Brothers. Prosecutors had initially also charged the squad leader, Frank Wutter, for one of those killings. But after General Mattis dropped the case against Sherritt, prosecutors withdraw that charge against Wutter. No one would ever be tried for killing Jamal, Chasib, Kataan, and Marwan. He tried to reach Mattis, but he never responded. In 2017, when he was profiled in The New Yorker, the topic of Haditha came up. You can't criminalize every mistake, Mattis said. Bad things happen in war. You have to have a degree of humanity when you're given the authority to lock your own troops up in jail for the rest of their life because they have the guts to volunteer to go into that situation. Not long after Matt has dismissed his case, Sherritt gave an interview to Frontline. Personally, Sherritt said, I think I did everything perfectly that day. He added, The way the system worked for me, I thought it worked pretty well. A couple of weeks later, Sherritt received an honorable discharge from the US Marine Corps. One of the first things I did when I started reporting on Haditha was look up Justin Sherritt on Facebook.

His photos were visible to the public. There were pictures from his time in the Marines, including a few of Miguel Therazas, who had been killed by the IED on November 19th, and Therazas's Memorial service a few days later. But mostly, Sheret posted pictures of his car, a blue 1969 GTO convertible with a black racing stripe. He posted some videos of the car on YouTube.

It's Justin here. Figured today's a good day. It's nice enough out. I'll give you a walk around of my GTO. It's got the hideaway headlights. They work with a little motor that I made.

Sheret had tricked it out in all sorts of custom ways.

So I can adjust my ride height with the airbags and the coil springs.

He'd added neon blue underglow lights to the bottom and blue lights on the dashboard. I did blue LED back spacing. I imagined him driving around in it near his home in rural Pennsylvania, top down, glowing like a blue lava lamp, blasting Blink 182. I knew that at some point, I'd need to try to reach Justin's share it. But one day, back when we were just starting our reporting, and we were out talking to Marines from 3:1. Hello. We're working on this audio project on something that happened in Fudita back in 2005. Our producers, Natalie and Raymond, heard something.

So I don't know if you guys remember Sheret. It was part of the investigation.

Right.

He just killed himself last year.

What?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

About a year ago.

Really? Yeah. Wow, I had no idea. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry to hear that. According to a coroner's report, Sherritt died sitting in his office chair at the computer desk in his basement. His sister told the coroner that he had PTSD and that the family had always worried that he would commit suicide. She told the coroner that he'd actually been hospitalized during high school for suicidal thoughts. Not long after that, he deployed to Iraq. Justin Sherritt had used a nine millimeter to shoot Chaseb, Qatan, and Jamal. Nearly 20 years later, he used a 9 millimeter to shoot himself. He left no note saying why. At the time of his death, Sherritt was living in Southwest Pennsylvania. He bought his grandmother's small white and green house, He was located out on a road with a couple of other families who, like Sherritt's, had been there for generations. He was divorced and lived there by himself. After we learned of Sherritt's death, a reporter, Parker, went to Pennsylvania to try to talk to people who Sherritt was close with. It had been a little over a year since he died. Parker knocked on the doors of neighbors who'd known him since he was a kid.

They described Sherritt as reserved. They said he spent a lot of time at home tinkering on his car and shooting his pistols into the woods. They said he often drank too much, usually Miller light. Parker found his coworkers. He'd been a jail guard in an underground coal miner and a nighttime electrician at a mill owned by US Steel. They told Parker that Sherritt was extremely good at mechanical things and electrical things, and that he almost never talked about his time in the service. She found people in his car club who'd hang out with him at meets. Sherritt would be sitting there in his GTO with a hood up. They admired Sherritt's wrenching skills, and they threw a rowdy memorial for him after he died. Justice It was here for us. Every one of you, get to your cars, fire that shit up. It makes a fucking noise. Several hundred cars revved their engines all at once. House, one actually caught on fire. And the friend who had driven Sherritt's GTO to the gathering used Sherritt's own fire extinguisher to put it out. Parker learned that Sherritt rarely talked to anyone about that day in Haditha.

She met several close friends of Sherritt's who hadn't even heard about the incident until they googled him after he died. Sherritt's shift partner at US Steel, an electrician named Justin Schultz, a guy Sherritt spent hours with every workday, was one of the only people who Sherritt talked to about that day in Haditha. Schultz said the conversation was brief. He was not ashamed. I mean, it was what it was. He was never ashamed, never expressed regret for it. It was a job, and he had to do it. There was one person who we knew Sherritt had talked to and who we knew we should talk to, too.

Hello?

Hey, James. It's Parker.

Hi.

How are you? Good. How are you doing?

James Prentis, Sherritt's old friend and fellow Marine who testified at Sherritt's Article 32 hearing. He's the guy who was expected to give damning testimony about how Sherritt's story of how the Four Brothers were killed was made up, a fiction. But who, on the stand, walked it all back. And then the investigating officer, Paul Ware, had suggested that the military's own investigators had inserted that detail in Prentis' statement. Prentis had never talked to a reporter about any of this. Parker met him at his apartment complex and followed up with him later on the phone.

Yeah, I wanted to ask you about.

And Prentis started telling her a story that we hadn't heard before. Back in 2005, Sherritt and Prentis were best friends. They'd met right after boot camp when they were still teenagers. They'd survived Falluja together. They'd become so close that even their moms were close.

His mom talked to my mom all the time.

Their moms kept in touch while their sons were overseas.

If he was able to call before I did, his mom would call my mom and say, Oh, they're okay.

After Falluja, when they got back to Camp Pendleton, they spent a ton of time hanging out together. They covertly swapped the room assignments posted on the barracks doors so they could bump together. They watched Dazed and Confused and the Big Labowski. They listened to Blink 182 and They built a beer pong table out of plywood.

I used to have big tournaments with everybody in the barracks room in there. That place would be a disaster the next day.

They went on spring break together and got arrested for underage drinking together.

We spent the night in jail. I paid for both of us to get out.

Then, a few months later, they headed back to Iraq together, to Haditha. On November 19th, 2005, Prentis wasn't in Sherrodt's squad. He wasn't there when the IED exploded and killed Miguel Therazas. But he was sent to the scene later on.

Everything had pretty much calmed down by then. It was dark.

He spotted his buddy Sherrodt on the street.

I saw him, and he saw me, and asked them, Are you okay? Or whatever.

The two friends stood near the hood of one of the Humvees and chatted for just a few minutes.

I asked him what happened. And then that's when he told me. It wasn't He didn't volunteer the information to me. I asked what happened, and then that's when he started talking.

And then Prentis told Parker what Sherritt had said.

He had told me that after the IED went off, and they assessed the situation there as far as who was wounded and everything, that they went to the nearby houses and cleared those. And then he told me about the guy that he shot point-blank range, and he was just standing there. And then they were going to come up with a story that the guy came, the AK-47 at him. And then that his M249 jammed, and that's why I had to use the pistol.

He's essentially saying that the idea that an AK-47 was pointed at me, we made that up. That was something he made up.

Yeah. That's what they were going to say.

Did he say why he shot the guy if the guy wasn't pointing an AK-47 at him?

No. I mean, not directly. I can assume that, because I know that they got hit with that IED and everything. I don't know if that's They were upset about what happened, and that was part of their retaliation or whatever. But he never directly told me. I just shot him for this reason, whatever it was.

Prentis ended up telling NCIS investigators about his conversation with Sheret. He was afraid he'd get in trouble if he didn't. But after that, things snowballed. He had to give a deposition to prosecutors who clearly thought he'd be a good witness for their side. Prentis met with Sheret's lawyers who made it clear to him that what he'd said to NCIS was really not good for his friend Justin. The fallout seemed to spread.

My mom had called his mom and When she answered the phone, she told my mom, It's not a good idea we talk to each other anymore.

Did you say why?

No. But it was implied because at this point, I guess in their mind, I'm against their son.

Prentis had reupped his contract with the Marines during this time and was preparing for a third deployment to Iraq. One day, Prentis ran into Sheret. Their platoon was about to ship out. Sheret was staying behind.

He came by where our platoon was. He talked to everybody. I remember trying to talk to him, and he just ignored me, acting like I wasn't there.

What did you say to him?

I don't remember word for word now, but like, Hey, how's it going? Or something like that. I remember he looked at me and then just looked away.

Said nothing?

Yeah.

Prentis left for Iraq with a sense of unease, but he tried to put the Haditha business out of his mind, and he did mostly forget about it. Until the middle of the night one night, Prentis was working guard duty near Lake Tatar, where Saddam Hussein had had a palace. Prentis, when the commanding officer of his company appeared and ordered him into a Humvee.

We went back to the battalion firm base. Still didn't tell me what was going on. I thought I was in trouble for something.

A Marine Corps lawyer took Prentis to a room with a chair and a phone.

He said, You're going to go in this room, and the phone is going to ring, and you're going to answer it.

Eventually, the phone rang, and Prentis listened as the investigating officer, Paul Ware, introduced himself. It was at about this moment that Prentis realized what was happening. He was on speakerphone in a courtroom in Camp Pendleton, where it was daytime, and where his friend Justin Sheret was sitting facing murder charges and listening.

And then I can hear another voice. They told me to stand up and raise my right-hand, and I remember looking around at all, Well, I'm not doing that.

So you didn't?

No. I figured it doesn't really matter. No one can see me.

Then Prentis was asked to repeat what he'd told NCIS, that Sherritt had told him about the killings and had told him about making up a cover story, words that he knew could help send his friend to prison. Prentis' mind drifted back to the meeting that he'd had with Sherritt's defense attorneys before he'd return to Iraq. He told Parker that they'd suggested something that seemed like a way out, that maybe what was in Prentis' written statement to NCIS wasn't accurate, that maybe the statement was wrong. And if so, Prentis could just say that.

They didn't really say, This is what you have to do, but more or less, if you did this, then it would help.

And did the idea that you could help your friend at this point, did that at that moment, appeal to you?

Yeah. I mean, I didn't want anything to happen to him, so if there was a way I could help them.

You were willing to do what you could at that point to maybe soften the blow of what you had said.

I really didn't want anything to happen to share it.

And so that's what Prentis was thinking about as he testified. He started walking back what he'd to NCIS. He tried to undo it bit by bit, right up to the moment when Sherrod's lawyer asked, just to make this clear, he did not say he was making up a story or would make up a story or had made up a story, but rather that was his story? Instead of telling the truth, Prentis found himself saying yes. Back when Sherritt told Prentis about what he had done that day, it didn't really faz Prentis. He said the conversation was basically matter of fact. Just one Marine describing a kill to another Marine. But Prentis said, Thinking back on it now, it was obvious Sheret knew he'd done something bad.

If you think that you didn't do anything wrong, then you wouldn't have to come up with a story to cover up something.

Right. And what do you think it was that he thought or knew that he knew he'd done wrong?

If he shot somebody that was unarmed, that's against the Geneva Convention and all that stuff.

Presumably, he would have known that.

No. Prentis told Parker that at the time he walked back the truth at Sherritt's Article 32 hearing, he didn't have much sympathy for the people Sherritt had killed.

At the time, I didn't really care. I mean, to be honest. I know the Marine Corps does a pretty good job of brainwashing us, which I can see now. At the time, anyone that was Middle Eastern-looking or whatever I had a pretty big prejudice against.

It wasn't until his third and last deployment, the one he just begun when he testified, that Prentis said he started to see things differently.

They sent us on this assault on this village that we were told was this big insurgency area. And the intelligence we were given was that their cover was that they were fishermen. They said they'll say that they're fishermen. And we get to this village and it's literally full of fishermen. Every house has fishing gear in it. Nets and tackle and all that stuff. And I think we found one AK-47 in the entire place. And you can tell it was old and probably hadn't even been used in years. I was like, What are we doing?

And so what ended up happening with the fishermen?

Nothing. They just left.

Not long after returning from Iraq, Prentis got out of the Marines.

I think the third deployment made me see more of the humanity there than I had before. It was like that veil of everyone there is like evil was, I guess, lifted. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

And what did you see when the veil was lifted?

It was that these are people that are just trying to live their life.

Just fishermen. Just car dealers, engineers, traffic officers, and customs workers. Just fathers, uncles, brothers, and the people they left behind. Ehab, Najla, and Khaled Jamal would never get justice for the deaths of their family members. Sherritt's story had won. But the other survivors still had a chance. That's next time on In the Dark. If you're having suicidal thoughts, you can call or text the number 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. There's also a Veterans Crisis Line that you can reach by dialing that same number, 988, and then pressing one. More resources are available online by going to 988lifeline. Org or Veterans Crisis Line net. If you want to listen to episode 8 right now, ad-free, you can do that by subscribing to The New Yorker. Subscribers get the remaining episodes ad-free a week early. Go to newyorker. Com/ad-f Dark to subscribe and listen now. In the Dark is reported and produced by me, Madelyne Baron, managing producer, Samara Freemark, producers Natalie Jablansky and Raymond Tungicar, and reporter, Parker Jesko. In the Dark is edited by Katherine Winter and Willing Davidson. Interpreting in a Rock by Aya Muthena. Additional interpreting and translation by Aya Al-Shikarchi.

Additional translation by Shirine Khalid. This episode was fact-checked by Lynnea Feldman-Emerson. Original music by Allison Leighton-Brown. Additional music by Chris Julen. Our theme is by Gary Meister. Sound design and mix by John Delore. Our art is by Amelia Cristiano Ponzi. Art Direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Michaelov. Foyal legal representation from the Foyal team at Lovie & Lowy. Legal review by Fabio Bertoni. In the Dark was created by American Public Media and is producing by The New Yorker. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of global audio for CondeNast is Chris Banon. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, you can send them to us at inthedark@newyorker. Com. And make sure to follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts. Hi there. It's Lale Arakoglu, the host of Condé Nace Travelers podcast, Women Who Travel. I'm here with our executive producer, Stephanie Kariuki. Hi, Lale. So good to be here. Stephanie and I, we've been talking a lot about the new twists and turns the show is taking. The team has been working really hard at honing in on the heart of the show.

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