Stars & Stripes

13 July 1996

By Karen Blakeman

Hanau, Germany - Spec. Efren Cruz may have thrown a few punches during a street fight in Sachsenhausen, Germany, last year, but military jurors weren't convinced that he wielded a knife.

They acquitted the 21-year-old soldier this week in Hanau of a charge of assault with intent to commit murder, apparently disregarding the testimony of several eyewitnesses who implicated Cruz.

The witnesses - mostly young soldiers and their dates who had watched or participated in the drinking and fighting late on Aug. 12 and early Aug. 13 - varied widely in their accounts of how the stabbing occurred. Defense Witnesses as well as a few people called by the prosecution implicated another U.S. soldier, Pvt.2 Ricky Lee Labato, as the man who cut 22-year-old Spec. Richard L. Knowlton Jr.

Labato was not at the trial.

Knowlton testified that he wrestled with Cruz during the free-for-all but hadn't realized he had been stabbed until a friend pointed out that he had blood on his shirt. One of the puncture wounds had penetrated a lung.

Cruz, of the 2nd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, sat motionless as Maj. Clark T. Boyd, the president of the jury panel, read the not-guilty verdict late Thursday.

He looked at the ceiling as his command sergeant major, Milton Jackson, who waited near the back of the courtroom, let loose a single clap and only partially stifled a cheer.

Cruz seemed a little dazed as he returned the hugs and handshakes of his lawyers, DAVID COURT and Capt. Steven Levin, and shook hands with friends. "He said, 'I'm happy. I can go on leave now,'" COURT said when asked for his client's response.

COURT said Cruz had been kept on active duty past his separation date while awaiting trial. Cruz hopes to re-enlist.

Knowlton had testified that his wrestling session with Cruz began as he was attempting to pull several soldiers from a brawl near the Irish pub. When he pulled Cruz away, Cruz pushed him.

Knowlton said he then pushed Cruz and accidentally ripped a chain from Cruz's neck. Cruz, the smaller of the two men, jumped Knowlton and the two began to wrestle. Somehow, Knowlton said, the two broke apart and moved away from each other. It was then that Knowlton realized he'd been stabbed twice in the back.

Several witnesses testified they saw no one else approach the two men as they wrestled. A German shipping merchant said that he saw a man who fit Cruz's description stab a man who fit Knowlton's description on the night Knowlton was attacked, but his version of the fight was different than the version provided by Knowlton and the other witnesses.

Defense witnesses and two German women who testified for the prosecution said that after the fight, another soldier, Labato, admitted he had been the one who stabbed the man who was fighting with Cruz. Character witnesses for the defense said Cruz was a good soldier but that Labato was not. In a written statement read to the jurors, Capt. Michael F. Pappal, a former company commander to both Cruz and Labato, said that Labato faces charges in an unrelated incident. Cruz's lawyer, COURT, said after the trial that he believed the government's lawyers should prosecute "the real perpetrator" of the stabbing.

Capts. Hank Wilson and Michael Isacco, Jr., the prosecutors in Cruz's case, said that any decision about further prosecution in the incident would be made by others.