TAEGU, South Korea — A military judge was expected to render a verdict Wednesday morning in the court-martial of an Army private charged with murder in the stabbing of a sergeant at Camp Carroll earlier this year.
Pfc. Gregory David Robertson, 25, faces life in prison if convicted of a murder charge in the Feb. 19 death of Sgt. Kenneth Lamond Kelly, 27.
Robertson’s court-martial began Monday at Camp Henry before military judge Army Col. Patrick J. Parrish. Robertson, who pleaded not guilty to the murder charge during Monday’s court proceedings, has opted to be tried before a military judge instead of a jury.
The case grew out of relationships both men had with then-Pfc. Kayamia Collins of the 293rd Signal Company, 36th Signal Battalion, Kelly’s former unit. The stabbing took place in Collins’ room.
Robertson is a computer graphics designer with the 20th Area Support Group at Camp Henry.
A sometimes tearful Collins, now a specialist, testified Monday that she and Kelly had a “passionate” relationship, which many in their unit knew about but which they tried to keep from their first sergeant to avoid getting Kelly into trouble for dating a subordinate.
She testified she also maintained a close — but not romantic — relationship with Robertson but said she sometimes sensed he harbored romantic feelings toward her.
It was Kelly’s jealousy over her closeness with Robertson, and a Feb. 5 occasion when he humiliated Robertson at Camp Walker’s Hilltop Club, that led to the fatal events, according to testimony.
Kelly either punched or shoved Robertson, who did not respond aggressively, according to testimony; Robertson later told Collins he felt he should have taken some action during the altercation.
Kelly and Collins broke up the night before the stabbing, she testified, and when Kelly learned Robertson was in her room, he rushed to her one-story quarters, broke windows, pounded on the door and shouted to let him in — which, eventually, she did.
She’d urged Robertson to leave before Kelly arrived but Robertson chose to stay, according to testimony.
Once inside, Kelly punched Collins, knocking her to the floor, then kicked her, she testified.
He then cornered and fell upon Robertson in a bathroom, according to defense attorneys, who said Robertson stabbed Kelly in the abdomen in self-defense with a knife he’d purchased earlier that day, prosecutors said.
Kelly was pronounced dead a short time later at the Camp Carroll medical clinic.
In closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutors said Robertson wanted to impress Collins and offset the humiliation of the Hilltop Club incident.
“He needed to show Pfc. Collins that he was a man. ‘I’m a strong man. I can stand up for myself,’” prosecutor Capt. Trevor I.S. Barna told the judge.
The defense said Robertson was “not a murderer” and he stabbed Kelly because he feared the sergeant might beat him to death.
Robertson “intended either to kill or to cause great bodily harm,” said Barna. “Stabbing somebody in the abdomen with that knife” would cause “great bodily harm.”
Robertson, said Barna, spurned Collins’ advice that he leave before Kelly arrived. “What does he do?” asked Barna. “He takes out the knife and says ‘I’ll be ready for him this time.’”
Just after the stabbing, a military police sergeant arrived, summoned to the scene by a soldier who’d heard the altercation.
Barna argued that Robertson never admitted to the MP on the scene, or later at the clinic, that he’d stabbed Kelly.
Robertson, said Barna, had “his chance” to tell authorities he’d acted in self-defense. Instead, “He says nothing,” Barna told the judge.
“Pfc. Robertson does what?” asked Barna. “He hides the knife and tries to leave. … Dispassionately. Calmly. Collectedly. Coolly. He hides it, and he tries to leave, and he’s caught. He gets caught trying to leave the scene with the murder weapon. That’s how we know it was an intentional killing. His behavior after the act.”
Defense lawyer Capt. James Culp said his defendant is “not a murderer.”
“I ask you to consider the tensions that were in that room,” Culp said. “Fear turned to terror for that normal but very immature individual,” he said of Robertson, who he referred to several times as a “seven-year-old.”
“He’s scared to death that Sgt. Kelly will get him” and he’ll “have nowhere to go. … That man full of fury and rage is only a step away from that door,” Culp said.
Then Kelly was inside. “And this is when the rage is unleashed,” Culp said. “He goes through Pfc. Collins like she wasn’t there. Punch! Punch!”
Then Kelly confronted Robertson in the bathroom, the lawyer said.
“In one second that fury was in that bathroom. … Pfc. Robertson is as far as you can go. There’s no getting away. He’s in the bathtub.”
Kelly, the attorney said, “only stopped his attack because Pfc. Robertson has hurt him with a knife in defense of himself and perhaps of Pfc. Collins.”
Although Robertson is contesting the murder charge, he pleaded guilty Monday to wrongfully possessing a butterfly knife; to trying to impede the investigation into the stabbing by trying to hide the knife, and to disobeying an order restricting him to Camp Henry.
Also Monday, in connection with a November sexual misconduct case at Camp Henry, he pleaded guilty to indecent assault, admitting he entered a female soldier’s room and, while she slept beneath a blanket, touched the blanket near her genital area. He also pleaded not guilty to a burglary charge but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of unlawfully entering the woman’s room.
