Clint Allen Lorance was born on December 13,1984 and is a former United States Army officer who is known for having been convicted and pardoned for war crimes related to the killing of two Afghan civilians.
32 Facts About Clint Lorance
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Clint Lorance was found guilty by a court-martial in 2013 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
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Clint Lorance was confined in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for six years.
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In 2015, Clint Lorance became a cause celebre among conservative commentators and activists.
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Fox News personalities, in particular Sean Hannity, advocated for Clint Lorance to be pardoned.
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Clint Lorance was eventually pardoned by President Donald Trump on November 15,2019.
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Clint Lorance was born and raised in the small town of Hobart, Oklahoma, and lived in Jackson County, Oklahoma.
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Clint Lorance's father Tracy is a welder, and his mother Anna was a stay-at-home mom.
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Clint Lorance then lived in Celeste, Texas, and Merit, Texas, in Hunt County.
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On his 18th birthday in 2002, Clint Lorance enlisted in the US Army.
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Clint Lorance was stationed first in South Korea for two years as a traffic officer, and then in Iraq, where he served for 15 months guarding detainees.
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On June 30,2012, Clint Lorance threatened a farmer and a small boy by pointing a rifle at the boy.
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On July 1,2012, Clint Lorance ordered two of his soldiers to fire at the villagers and instructed one of his NCOs to provide a false report to the Troop TOC.
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Clint Lorance said that the motorcycle was just seconds away from his troops.
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Clint Lorance's soldiers testified that the motorcycle was spotted approximately 600 feet away, and several testified that the motorcycle could not have reached the platoon's position.
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Attorneys for Clint Lorance attempted to cast doubt on four of the soldiers' accounts, arguing that they were granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.
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The other five soldiers who testified against Clint Lorance did not receive immunity.
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Clint Lorance then asked a second US soldier to open fire, who did and killed two of the Afghans while the third ran away.
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Clint Lorance was investigated after the soldiers in his platoon reported the incident.
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Clint Lorance was charged nine months later, though the soldiers who fired the shots were not themselves charged.
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Clint Lorance was tried in August 2013 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
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Clint Lorance never testified in the court hearings, though he did take responsibility for his men's actions.
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Clint Lorance's lawyer said Clint Lorance's actions were justified by the threat level at the time, by the information conveyed to him by Army helicopter pilots that insurgents were loitering on three sides of the platoon, and by intelligence reports that men on motorcycles were presumed to be Taliban members, which led him to believe that the men on the motorcycle were Taliban suicide bombers and an imminent threat.
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Clint Lorance was sentenced to 20 years in prison, forfeiture of all pay, and dismissal from the Army.
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In December 2014, an attorney for Clint Lorance filed pleadings alleging that Clint Lorance was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct.
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Clint Lorance accepted the pardon, resulting in his release from custody.
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Clint Lorance became a cause celebre among conservative commentators and activists.
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In January 2015, supporters of Clint Lorance created a petition on the White House website asking President Barack Obama to grant a presidential pardon to Clint Lorance.
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In October 2019, Clint Lorance's case was featured in the Starz documentary series Leavenworth, the only documentary known to exist featuring footage inside the secretive United States Disciplinary Barracks.
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Clint Lorance responded that his petition was not moot because he continued to suffer collateral consequences from his convictions.
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The district court agreed that Clint Lorance continued to suffer collateral consequences but deemed the habeas petition moot nonetheless, concluding that Clint Lorance's acceptance of the presidential pardon constituted a legal confession of guilt and thus a waiver of his habeas rights, and granted the government's motion to dismiss, and this appeal followed.
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In 2020, Clint Lorance became a student in the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, where he graduated on May 13,2023.