I was present in the courtroom at Ft Bragg, NC, in 1988 when then-Specialist 4 Ronald Gray, U.S. Army, was convicted and when he was sentenced to death for murder.
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| Spec. 4 Ronald Gray during his court martial for capital murder at Ft Bragg, NC, in 1988. |
Gray, a former soldier who was convicted in a series of rapes and murders in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg more than 25 years ago, lost a court battle to keep in effect a stay of execution first granted by a U.S. District Court in Kansas in November 2008.The reason that Gray is described as a "former soldier" is because his sentence also included a dishonorable discharge, along with first a reduction in rank to Private (E-1), the lowest enlisted rank, and total forfeiture of all pay and allowances.
Earlier this week, Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled the stay was no longer in effect and denied Gray's request to further block the military from moving forward with the death sentence.
Gray, who was convicted and sentenced in 1988, is being held at the U.S. Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
His crimes were committed in 1986 and 1987 on Fort Bragg and near Fairlane Acres Mobile Home Park off Santa Fe Drive.
Gray killed cab driver Kimberly Ann Ruggles, Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay, Campbell University student Linda Jean Coats and Fairlane Acres resident and soldier's wife Tammy Wilson and raped several other women.
In addition to the death sentence handed down by a military court, he also received eight life sentences from civilian courts, including three to be served consecutively.
Because at least one of the victim's bodies was found on the premises of Ft Bragg, the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID, where I later served as a principal staff officer) investigated. IIRC, the body was that of Ms. Ruggles, the cab driver. It was for this murder that he was sentenced to death by a general court martial. The trials in civilian court followed. Military authorities remanded Gray to civilian custody conditional on their agreement to return him to military control once the civilian trials were over, regardless of verdicts. (This kind of agreement is quite common.)
No date has yet been set for Gray's sentence to be carried out.
Under military law, only a general court martial (GCM) can adjudge a dishonorable discharge or death penalty. The court is called a "general" court because it may be convened only upon the authority of a general officer (or admiral in the Navy) in command. GCMs are the highest-level trial courts of the military.
A GCM may adjudge the death penalty only if the convening authority includes that in his orders convening the court. Unlike civil courts, hung juries are not possible in in military courts. A GCM's panel (jury) votes once and only once to convict or not. The panel's vote to convict must be unanimous; if there is even one vote to acquit, the accused is acquitted. The panel votes once per charge for which the accused is tried, and when the vote is taken for each charge, the vote is final and the panel moves to the next charge.
The death penalty likewise is voted one time only and it also must be unanimous. Also, unlike civil juries, members of the panel may question witnesses by sending questions in writing to the judge, who takes the decision on whether to allow it. If so, the judge reads the question to the witness; the judge may consult first with both the trial counsel (prosecutor) and the defense counsel.
How each panel member votes is not recorded, only the total. No panel member, then, may be identified as casting a deciding vote. It is furthermore strictly forbidden for any mention of an officer's or NCO's service on a panel to be included in any report or personnel file; no promotion board, for example, will ever know that an officer or NCO served on a court's panel at all, much less which trial.
FindLaw has a good guide to military courts.
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