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Group will push for decision on ex-Marine

Lawyers from Citizen Soldier take the case of a man charged with deserting during the Vietnam War.

By WILL VAN SANT
Published January 4, 2006

A Tarpon Springs man arrested last summer on charges of deserting the Marine Corps 40 years ago has gotten some legal muscle behind him.

Representatives of Citizen Soldier, a nonprofit advocacy group for service members and veterans in disputes with the military, plan to travel today to Camp Lejeune, N.C., where 65-year-old Jerry Texiero is being held.

Tod Ensign, Citizen Soldier's legal director, said he hopes the visit prompts the military to decide Texiero's fate. He could be administratively discharged or court martialed and face prison time.

"Our position is that the guy should be released," Ensign said. "My god, he has been in a cell for five months and his crime was refusing to go to a war that is now generally discredited."

Ensign said he and another attorney plan to represent Texiero. During the visit they will meet with their client, his appointed military defense attorney and Marine Corps officials.

Citizen Soldier, founded in 1969, has lobbied for service members sickened in Vietnam by Agent Orange. More recently, the group helped defend Camilo Mejia, a Miami Beach man who served nine months in a military prison after failing to return to Iraq with his unit.

In the summer of 1965, as the Vietnam War was heating up, Texiero, a Marine Corps corporal on his second tour of duty, slipped away from a military base in Barstow, Calif.

By the time Marine Corps investigators tracked him down in August 2005, he was calling himself Gerome Conti and selling boats near the Tarpon Springs Sponge Docks.

As Conti, Texiero was on probation for a 1998 fraud and grand theft conviction, and fingerprints taken at the time of his arrest were matched to those in Texiero's military file.

For several months, Texiero was held at the Pinellas County Jail on a charge of violation of probation. A judge released him in mid December on a $10,000 bond so he could face the Marine Corps desertion charge.

Since arriving at Camp Lejeune nearly three weeks ago, Texiero's longtime friend Elaine Smith has stayed at a hotel on the base, urging his release.

The 58-year-old Smith, who made the trip from Pinellas County to North Carolina with her 84-year-old father, Leonard, said she hoped Ensign's visit would spur the Marine Corps to make a speedy decision.

"They need to know that someone is looking out for Jerry's best interests," Smith said. "These guys have years of experience with this."

Smith said Texiero told her during jail house visits that he fled the Marines because he could not see himself fighting in Vietnam.

"Jerry just isn't somebody that would condone killing," Smith said. "He just couldn't be involved in something that took the lives of innocent people."

[Last modified January 4, 2006, 01:06:11]