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American Morning

Talk With Oscar Nelson's Father

Aired September 05, 2003 - 08:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Back on the 21st of May, a U.S. Army Humvee on night patrol in Iraq hit a bump and flipped over, killing an American soldier beneath it. The driver, 25-year-old Sergeant Oscar Nelson, was charged with unpremeditated murder. He was court- martialed and sentenced to seven years in jail.
A statement from the Army given to us here at AMERICAN MORNING earlier today says, and reading now, "Sergeant Nelson was accused of erratically driving a Humvee in darkness at excessive speed, resulting in the crash that killed Specialist Nathaniel Caldwell on May 21, 2003 in Iraq. Other charges against Nelson included giving a false official statement, aggravated assault and obstruction of justice."

From Baltimore now, Oscar Nelson's father, Larry Steele, just returned from Iraq and says his son was treated unfairly by the U.S. Army.

Mr. Steele, good morning to you.

LARRY STEELE, SON SENTENCED TO SEVEN YEARS IN PRISON: Good morning, Bill.

HEMMER: What do you think went wrong in the darkness of that desert that night in May?

STEELE: Well, I'll have to agree with what my son said on the stand, he made a terrible mistake and a mistake that cost the life of another soldier.

HEMMER: Yes. What do you think the proper punishment should have been, then?

STEELE: I -- well, as I told my son, he deserved to be disciplined and I agree with the Army in that he deserved to be disciplined. I felt that the initial charge of unpremeditated murder was overly harsh. You had mentioned the aggravated assault. That charge was dropped by the prosecution.

HEMMER: He sent you an e-mail, I know, and I want to read from it, and with all due respect, I just want to share this with our viewers to get a better understanding for what happened.

STEELE: Sure.

HEMMER: He writes, "I started to speed up. I told Caldwell to hold on and then turned out the lights. Seconds later," he says, "we were airborne. I was ejected from the vehicle in the air right after the initial impact. It was going upward. I got up, ran toward the direction of where I heard the vehicle land."

What prompted your adopted son to turn out the lights and gain speed that night?

STEELE: As he told us, and he also stated in the statement in court, he said he did a dumb teenage type thing. He said that one of the things, it's stress relief, what they were doing. We talked to many soldiers while we were in Tikrit and in Kirkuk and they said that they didn't understand why the court martial was going forward because a lot of them were doing the same thing.

My viewpoint is that the Army has to send a message to the troops while they're going through great periods of stress and of the highs and the lows involved with where they are. Stress relief cannot come as a product of avoiding the rules or violating the rules. The Army has a very set guideline for behavior.

My son violated that -- those guidelines and rules and he must pay the price. But I felt, as I said before, that the unpremeditated murder charge was overly harsh. He did plead guilty to negligent homicide and the judge had the opportunity and is allowed in UCMJ to raise that, and he raised it to involuntary manslaughter, which carries a heavier sentence for that alone. That's 10 years.

He could have gone to jail for 21 years. I think that the court was fair and I think the judge was overly fair in the sentencing that he gave Oscar in seven years.

HEMMER: It is my understanding there is an appeal involved here, and that will go forward. I know you just got back from Iraq and in the highly emotional story that we're talking about here, you also met with the family of the deceased U.S. troop.

STEELE: Yes.

HEMMER: How did that go?

STEELE: We met Mrs. Caldwell, Nathaniel's wife, and Nathaniel's brother Robert, who's a staff sergeant in the Army, at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. And as a matter of fact, Robert Caldwell and another sergeant that we met there really helped us get to Tikrit because the Army had dropped the ball. Everywhere we went, everybody said who are you and why are you here?

As a consequence of being thrown together with the Caldwells, my wife, myself and our daughter-in-law, Oscar's wife Cheryl, I feel that we came fairly close with them. I mean we shared a C-130 ride, a Lockheed L1011 ride, Blackhawk helicopter rides with them and I feel terrible for Mrs. Caldwell. I can only imagine what it feels like -- well, I can imagine. I do know, because I lost a wife a number of years ago to cancer. But I know to have a husband ripped out from you the way he was has to hurt. It's devastating.

HEMMER: Yes.

Thanks for sharing. Good luck to you and your family, Mr. Steele.

STEELE: Thank you.

HEMMER: Larry Steele with us this morning.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired September 5, 2003 - 08:16   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Back on the 21st of May, a U.S. Army Humvee on night patrol in Iraq hit a bump and flipped over, killing an American soldier beneath it. The driver, 25-year-old Sergeant Oscar Nelson, was charged with unpremeditated murder. He was court- martialed and sentenced to seven years in jail.
A statement from the Army given to us here at AMERICAN MORNING earlier today says, and reading now, "Sergeant Nelson was accused of erratically driving a Humvee in darkness at excessive speed, resulting in the crash that killed Specialist Nathaniel Caldwell on May 21, 2003 in Iraq. Other charges against Nelson included giving a false official statement, aggravated assault and obstruction of justice."

From Baltimore now, Oscar Nelson's father, Larry Steele, just returned from Iraq and says his son was treated unfairly by the U.S. Army.

Mr. Steele, good morning to you.

LARRY STEELE, SON SENTENCED TO SEVEN YEARS IN PRISON: Good morning, Bill.

HEMMER: What do you think went wrong in the darkness of that desert that night in May?

STEELE: Well, I'll have to agree with what my son said on the stand, he made a terrible mistake and a mistake that cost the life of another soldier.

HEMMER: Yes. What do you think the proper punishment should have been, then?

STEELE: I -- well, as I told my son, he deserved to be disciplined and I agree with the Army in that he deserved to be disciplined. I felt that the initial charge of unpremeditated murder was overly harsh. You had mentioned the aggravated assault. That charge was dropped by the prosecution.

HEMMER: He sent you an e-mail, I know, and I want to read from it, and with all due respect, I just want to share this with our viewers to get a better understanding for what happened.

STEELE: Sure.

HEMMER: He writes, "I started to speed up. I told Caldwell to hold on and then turned out the lights. Seconds later," he says, "we were airborne. I was ejected from the vehicle in the air right after the initial impact. It was going upward. I got up, ran toward the direction of where I heard the vehicle land."

What prompted your adopted son to turn out the lights and gain speed that night?

STEELE: As he told us, and he also stated in the statement in court, he said he did a dumb teenage type thing. He said that one of the things, it's stress relief, what they were doing. We talked to many soldiers while we were in Tikrit and in Kirkuk and they said that they didn't understand why the court martial was going forward because a lot of them were doing the same thing.

My viewpoint is that the Army has to send a message to the troops while they're going through great periods of stress and of the highs and the lows involved with where they are. Stress relief cannot come as a product of avoiding the rules or violating the rules. The Army has a very set guideline for behavior.

My son violated that -- those guidelines and rules and he must pay the price. But I felt, as I said before, that the unpremeditated murder charge was overly harsh. He did plead guilty to negligent homicide and the judge had the opportunity and is allowed in UCMJ to raise that, and he raised it to involuntary manslaughter, which carries a heavier sentence for that alone. That's 10 years.

He could have gone to jail for 21 years. I think that the court was fair and I think the judge was overly fair in the sentencing that he gave Oscar in seven years.

HEMMER: It is my understanding there is an appeal involved here, and that will go forward. I know you just got back from Iraq and in the highly emotional story that we're talking about here, you also met with the family of the deceased U.S. troop.

STEELE: Yes.

HEMMER: How did that go?

STEELE: We met Mrs. Caldwell, Nathaniel's wife, and Nathaniel's brother Robert, who's a staff sergeant in the Army, at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. And as a matter of fact, Robert Caldwell and another sergeant that we met there really helped us get to Tikrit because the Army had dropped the ball. Everywhere we went, everybody said who are you and why are you here?

As a consequence of being thrown together with the Caldwells, my wife, myself and our daughter-in-law, Oscar's wife Cheryl, I feel that we came fairly close with them. I mean we shared a C-130 ride, a Lockheed L1011 ride, Blackhawk helicopter rides with them and I feel terrible for Mrs. Caldwell. I can only imagine what it feels like -- well, I can imagine. I do know, because I lost a wife a number of years ago to cancer. But I know to have a husband ripped out from you the way he was has to hurt. It's devastating.

HEMMER: Yes.

Thanks for sharing. Good luck to you and your family, Mr. Steele.

STEELE: Thank you.

HEMMER: Larry Steele with us this morning.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com