Biography
John Stafford was born December 18,1940 Parris Island, SC, and died June 29,2011 at 8:30pm at the Orlando Regional Medical Center,Orlando, FL. of a Marine Corps family. His paternal ancestors were Irish Catholic migrants from County Wexford, and claim links to the Dukes of Buckingham. His maternal ancestors were from Sweden and Bohemia.
Stafford was educated at the University of Maryland, College Park where he was Treasurer of the SGA, serving with now-U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who was elected VP on that same ballot. He also wrote the column "Cloakroom Caucus" for the Diamondback daily newspaper, was Editor-in-Chief of the "M-Book", and was Associate Editor of the "Terrapin", and was a DJ for 4 years on WMUC with his 4 hour every Sunday evening show, playing pop and folk, and the early R&B songs on 45's and LP's of those earliest singers, most of whom are now in the R&B Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Stafford met and knew many of those early pioneer artists---Ruthie Brown, The Platters, The Drifters, etc.---personally, from the Casino Royale in downtown DC in the 1950s, and their other dates and concerts, as well as Joan Baez and Ian and Sylvia and Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, et al., in his later years.
He served 4 years in the US Marine Corps as a lawyer during the Vietnam war. His cases as a prosecutor and defense counsel at Cherry Pt. MCAS and NAVARA and the Navy JAG Investigations Division included three of the most important cases arising during that war.
The case of US v. Denzil Allen was the first torture and mass murder and atrocity case of the Vietnam war, 9 months before My Lai. The case of US v. David Y. Przbycien led to setting the limit on how long a serviceman may be detained before trial at 90 days, or charges must be dismissed. That rule was later adopted by the Federal criminal courts, on a 60-day basis.
The case of US v. John Phillip Wass raised the issue of whether or not the United States was in "a time of war" in Vietnam, as Congress had not declared war (as required by the Constitution), but merely passed the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in a rush requested by President Lyndon Johnson, before any confirmation of the reality of the second alleged North Vietnamese attack on the destroyer USS Turner Joy could be confirmed.
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