Court-martial of Billy Dean Smith

Private Billy Dean Smith was court-martialed by the U.S. Army in 1972 on charges of the premeditated murder of two officers and premeditated attempted murder of two other officers in Vietnam on March 15, 1971. He was charged with throwing a hand grenade into an officers' barracks at the Ben Hoa military base. All of the officers were white and Smith was Black.^[1][2] Smith had been open about his opposition to the war, which he felt was racist, and to the racism he felt he and other non-white GIs were experiencing in the military. Smith, his defense team and his supporters, argued this was the reason he was quickly held responsible for the explosion, even though they felt there was very little evidence to support the charges.^[3] Smith's ultimate exoneration through military court-martial seemed to confirm his supporters arguments. This was the first trial in the U.S. where a defendant was charged with fragging, the deliberate or attempted killing of a soldier, usually a superior officer, by another soldier.^[4] The term fragging emerged during the Vietnam War, when the occurrence of these incidents reached unprecedented numbers and were often committed or attempted using a fragmentation or hand grenade.^[5] According to author George Lepre, there were 904 documented or suspected fragging incidents in Vietnam between 1969 and 1972 (see here for more detail).^[6] Smith was also charged with assaulting a military police (MP) staff sergeant and with kneeing and spitting on another MP during his arrest.^[1] His court-martial at Fort Ord in California took over two months while generating national and international press coverage. On November 14, 1972, Smith was found not guilty of all six counts of murder, attempted murder and assault. He was found guilty on the most minor charge of resisting arrest, but even this was subsequently overturned on appeal. He spent nearly two years in solitary confinement for "23 out of 24 hours of every day" for crimes he was found innocent of committing. Smith's treatment and confinement has been compared to that of First Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr., the white Army officer who had been convicted of murdering innocent Vietnamese villagers at Mỹ Lai, and was allowed to live in private officer quarters, before, and even after, his conviction.^{[6]: 56 [7]}