Bradley Manning hasn’t been sentenced yet , but it was announced Tuesday that the maximum amount of time he could spend in prison had been cut to “only” 90 years.
Manning is in his second week of sentencing, and though the WikiLeaks ally has already won some important victories in his case, he could still spend the rest of his life in prison. Still, even the reduction to 90 years is also a victory for Manning’s defense team, who requested the maximum sentence be brought down from 136 to 80 years.
The 25-year-old Army Pfc.’s lawyers have portrayed him as naive and well-intentioned, and successfully merged many of his offenses on the basis of similarity among them to reduce his maximum sentence.
Manning was convicted last week on 20 counts, which included six Espionage Act violations, federal theft counts and a federal computer fraud charge. He leaked more than 700,000 documents from classified government computers while working as an intelligence analyst in 2010.
He said that he leaked the information merely to expose wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. government, its military and its diplomats. He also said that he was very discerning in what information he chose to leak, and that he did not release material that would harm service members or national security.
The judge in his court martial more or less accepted this explanation . He was acquitted of various “aiding the enemy” charges.
Bradley Manning’s sentencing is expected to wrap up this Friday. What do you think should happen to the WikiLeaks whistleblower?
[Image: Bradley Manning Support Network]