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In April 2001, the Honolulu Advertiser published an article titled, "Mysterious Schofield Plot Filled with Untold Stories."1 Those who took the time to read the piece learned that the six-acre Schofield Barracks Post Cemetery in Hawaii has a special plot containing the remains of seven Soldiers who were tried, convicted, and executed either by hanging or by firing squad. What follows is the story of five of those seven courts-martial, which occurred either in Australia, Hawaii, or India. They are examined in chronological order.2
United States v. Private Edward J. Leonski Australia 1942
Twenty-four year old Leonski "paid with his life for three brutal murders which chilled the blood."3 The victims, all Australian females residing in Melbourne, were killed by the accused on three different days in May 1942. The accused, a private (PVT) assigned to the 52d Signal Battalion, Camp Pell, Melbourne, Australia, was apprehended and confessed to the murders. He was charged with premeditated murder of all three victims in that Leonski "willfully, deliberately, feloniously, [and] unlawfully" strangled each woman "with his hands."4 Tried by general court-martial in July, he was found guilty of the triple homicide and sentenced to death.
Given that Leonski had confessed to the killings when questioned by an Australian police detective, the panel members did not have trouble finding him guilty. But the accused was a heavy drinker, and evidence was presented at trial that he had consumed prodigious amounts of alcohol prior to each murder. Prior to the last homicide on 18 May, for example, PVT Leonski drank "25-30 glasses of beer, followed by five one-ounce whiskeys."5 The defense suggested that the accused's drinking was evidence of "mental derangement," but the panel rejected this theory, as did Lieutenant Colonel John A. Stagg in his Staff Judge Advocate's Review of the case.6 Leonski in fact "had acquired a reputation for his drinking ability," and the members necessarily concluded that he was able to form the requisite intent to support their findings.7
On October 26, 1942, the Board of Review, Branch Office of The Judge Advocate General, then sitting in Melbourne, Australia, concluded in a thirty-page opinion that the record was "legally sufficient to support the findings of guilty . . . and the sentence."8 Events moved quickly after...