William Calley

William Laws Calley Jr. (born June 8, 1943) is an American United States Army former officer and convicted war criminal. He was convicted by court-martial of murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War.

On April 1, 1971, only a day after Calley was sentenced in prison at Fort Leavenworth, President Richard Nixon ordered him transferred from Leavenworth prison to house arrest at Fort Benning, pending appeal.

Calley served only three and a half years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning. He petitioned the federal district court for habeas corpus on February 11, 1974, which was granted on September 25, 1974, along with his immediate release, by federal judge J. Robert Elliott. Judge Elliott determined that Calley's trial had been prejudiced by pre-trial publicity, denial of subpoenas of certain defense witnesses, refusal of the United States House of Representatives to release testimony taken in executive session of its My Lai investigation, and inadequate notice of the charges. The judge had released Calley on bail on February 27, 1974, but an appeals court reversed Elliott's ruling and returned Calley to U.S. Army custody on June 13, 1974. Consequently, his general court-martial conviction and dismissal from the U.S. Army were upheld; however, the prison sentence and subsequent parole obligations were commuted to time served, leaving Calley a free man.