Court Adjourns on My Lai

The My Lai massacre of 1968 reverberated profoundly throughout the U.S. The trial and conviction of Lieut. William Calley Jr. divided the land as severely as any event of the Viet Nam War. Last week, more than three years after My Lai, the final court-martial arising from the killings came quietly to a close. After 62 days of trial and deliberation, a military jury took less than four hours to find Colonel Oran K. Henderson not guilty of covering up the tragedy.

The verdict on Henderson, who had become commander of the Americal Division's 11th Infantry Brigade just one day before the assault on the hamlet, came as no surprise. Last month, having earlier been acquitted of all charges relating to his role in the incident, former Captain Ernest Medina testified at Henderson's trial. He admitted that although his platoon leaders had told him that at least 106 Vietnamese had been killed, he informed Henderson that the casualties had numbered only 20 to 28, and that "I would not let anything like that happen." With Medina's testimony, the case against Henderson was seriously undermined. Of the 25 men who originally faced charges stemming from My Lai, six have come to trial. Of them, only Calley was convicted.

Henderson was not the only Army officer with cause to celebrate. The week before, his successor as commander of the 11th Brigade, Brigadier General John W. Donaldson, was exonerated by the Army equivalent of a grand jury of charges that he had murdered six Vietnamese civilians by shooting them from his helicopter (TIME, June 14). The incidents were not connected with My Lai and were alleged to have taken place several months later. After a four-month investigation, the charges against Donaldson, the highest-ranking officer to be accused of murdering Vietnamese civilians, were dropped.

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