Calley Convicted for My Lai: America Confronts Its War Crimes
The jury deliberated for 79 hours, longer than the actual massacre took. Lieutenant William Calley was convicted of personally murdering 22 unarmed Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, though the death toll reached over 500. He served exactly three and a half years — not in prison, but under house arrest in his apartment after President Nixon intervened. His platoon sergeant, the helicopter pilot who tried to stop the killings, and dozens of other witnesses testified, yet Calley was the only person convicted out of 26 men initially charged. The trial forced Americans to confront what their soldiers were doing in villages they couldn't pronounce, but the sentence told them something else entirely: we'd look at the horror, then glance away.
March 29, 1971
55 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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