Ossie Brown - The My Lai Case

The My Lai Case

Brown's most memorable court victory was in the 1970 trial of Sergeant Mitchell (born 1940) held at Fort Hood in central Texas. Mitchell was accused by the Army of having committed war crimes against the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. Brown predicted that Mitchell's prosectors, who rested their arguments early, had not "proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt." The next day, Brown collapsed in his motel room and was later taken to a hospital in Temple in Bell County. The judge, Colonel George R. Robinson, adjourned the case until Brown's recovery.

One of the witnesses against Mitchell was former radioman Charles Sledge (born 1947), an African American luggage-factory worker from Sardis in Panola County in northwestern Mississippi. Sledge said that he "positively" saw Mitchell shoot a group of Vietnamese women, children, and senior men who took cover in a ditch. Sledge also said that he saw Mitchell confer with Second Lieutenant William Calley Jr., at the edge of the trench before the two opened fire on the villagers from about five or six feet away. "They were falling and screaming," Sledge testified. Calley, meanwhile, was tried November 16, 1970, at Fort Benning, Georgia. Brown brought out several discrepancies between Sledge's courtroom statements and his earlier testimony before Army investigators; one was Sledge's earlier claim that he "believed" Mitchell had fired into the ditch and his claim at the trial that he was "positive" that Mitchell had killed the civilians.