Prometheus 6

The 28 soldiers in the Puget Sound case were stationed at Fort Lawton on Aug. 15, 1944, when Mr. Olivotto was found dead after a night of fighting among American and Italian soldiers on the base. Some American soldiers — white and black — objected to what they saw as lenient treatment of the scores of Italian prisoners held there....

The ruling notes that white military police were lax in quelling the riot. And it suggests that Mr. Jaworski, who died in 1982, would have been aware of testimony, which he did not share with the defense, that suggested a white military policeman could have been involved in the Olivotto killing.

One black soldier had told an investigator that a white military policeman had threatened to “bust” the skull of an Italian soldier.

In his book, Mr. Hamann said the evidence pointed to a white military policeman who had been present at every critical moment in the days leading up to the lynching, and who discovered Mr. Olivotto’s body. The policeman, who is deceased, was convicted of going absent without leave.

1944 Conviction of Black G.I.’s Is Ruled Flawed
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

SEATTLE, Oct. 26 — Guglielmo Olivotto, an Italian prisoner of war, died with a noose around his neck, lynched at a military post on Puget Sound 63 years ago. Samuel Snow, 83, hopes that people will stop blaming him and the 27 other black soldiers convicted of starting the riot that led to Mr. Olivotto’s death. It was one of the largest Army courts-martial of World War II.

This week, a review board issued a ruling that could lead to overturning the convictions of all 28 soldiers, granting honorable discharges and providing them with back pay.

The board found that the court-martial was flawed, that the defense was unjustly rushed and that the prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, a young lieutenant colonel who went on to fame three decades later as a Watergate special prosecutor, had important evidence that he did not share with defense lawyers.

All of the 28 have died except for Mr. Snow and another soldier.

“It means a lot to me that it’s going to come out in the paper,” Mr. Snow said Friday from his home in Leesburg, Fla. “Now people are going to see that I wasn’t a villain. And I’m not a villain.”