William Calley William Laws Calley Jr . ( born June 8 , 1943 ) is a convicted American war criminal and a former U . S . Army officer found guilty of murder for his role in the My Lai Massacre on March 16 , 1968 , during the Vietnam War . Early life . William Calley was born in Miami , Florida . His father was a United States Navy veteran of World War II . Calley graduated from Miami Edison High School in Miami and then attended Palm Beach Junior College in 1963 . He dropped out in 1964 after receiving unsatisfactory grades , consisting of one C , two Ds , and four Fs . Calley then worked at a variety of jobs before enlistment , including as a bellhop , dishwasher , salesman , insurance appraiser and train conductor . Military career . Calley underwent eight weeks of basic combat training at Fort Bliss , Texas , followed by eight weeks advanced individual training as a company clerk at Fort Lewis , Washington . Having scored high enough on his Armed Forces Qualification tests , he applied for and was subsequently accepted into Officer ' s Candidate School ( OCS ) . He then began 26 weeks of junior officer training at Fort Benning in mid - March 1967 . Upon graduating from OCS Class No . 51 on September 7 , 1967 , he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Infantry . Following his commission , Calley was assigned to Company C , 1st Battalion , 20th Infantry Regiment , 11th Infantry Brigade , and began training at Schofield Barracks , Hawaii , in preparation for deployment to Vietnam . Calley ' s evaluations described him as " average " as an officer . Later , as the My Lai investigation progressed , a more negative picture emerged . Men in his platoon reported to army investigators that Calley lacked common sense and could not read a map or compass properly . A number of men assigned under Calley claimed that because he was so disliked some secretly discussed assassinating him . Murder trial . The events in My Lai had initially been covered up by local divisional command . In April 1969 , nearly thirteen months after the massacre , Ron Ridenhour , a G . I . who had been with the 11th Brigade wrote letters to the President , Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense . In these letters Ridenhour described some of the atrocities by the soldiers at My Lai that he had been told about . Calley was charged on September 5 , 1969 , with six specifications of premeditated murder for the deaths of 104 Vietnamese civilians near the village of My Lai , at a hamlet called Son My , more commonly called My Lai in the U . S . press . As many as 500 villagers , mostly women , children , infants and the elderly , had been systematically killed by American soldiers during a bloody rampage on March 16 , 1968 . Upon conviction , Calley could have faced the death penalty . On November 12 , 1969 , investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story and revealed that Calley was charged with murdering 109 Vietnamese . Calley ' s trial started on November 17 , 1970 . It was the military prosecution ' s contention that Calley , in defiance of the rules of engagement , ordered his men to deliberately murder unarmed Vietnamese civilians despite the fact that his men were not under enemy fire at all . Testimony revealed that Calley had ordered the men of 1st Platoon , Company C , 1st Battalion , 20th Infantry of the 23rd Infantry Division ( Americal ) to kill everyone in the village . In presenting the case , the two military prosecutors , Aubrey Daniel and John Partin , were hamstrung by the reluctance of many soldiers to testify against Calley . Some refused to answer questions point - blank on the witness stand by citing the Fifth Amendment right against self - incrimination . However , one holdout , a soldier in Calley ' s unit named Paul Meadlo , after being jailed for contempt of court by the presiding judge , Reid W . Kennedy , reluctantly agreed to testify . In his testimony , Meadlo described that during the day ' s events , he was standing guard over a few dozen My Lai villagers when Lt . Calley approached him and ordered him to shoot all the civilians . When Meadlo balked at the orders , Calley backed off 20 feet ( 6 m ) or more and opened fire on the people himself , and Meadlo joined in . Another witness named Dennis Conti , who was also reluctant to testify , described the carnage , claiming that Calley had started it and the rest of the 105 soldiers of Charlie Company followed suit . Another witness , named Leonard Gonzalez , told of seeing one of the soldiers of Calley ' s unit herd some men and women villagers together and order them to strip off their clothing . When the villagers refused , the enraged soldier fired a single round from his M - 79 grenade launcher into the crowd , killing everyone . Calley ' s original defense that the death of the villagers was the result of an accidental helicopter or aerial airstrike was quashed by the few prosecution witnesses . In his new defense , Calley claimed he was following the orders of his immediate superior , Captain Ernest Medina . Whether this order was actually given is disputed ; Medina was acquitted of all charges relating to the incident at a separate trial in August 1971 . Taking the witness stand , Calley , under the direct examination by his civilian defense lawyer George Latimer , claimed that on the previous day , his commanding officer , Captain Medina , made it clear that his unit was to move into the village and that everyone was to be shot for they all were Viet Cong . Twenty - one other members of Charlie Company also testified in Calley ' s defense , corroborating the orders . But Medina publicly denied that he had ever given such orders and stated that he had meant enemy soldiers , while Calley assumed that his order to " kill the enemy " meant to kill " everyone . " In his personal statement , Calley stated that : After deliberating for 79 hours , the six - officer jury ( five of whom had served in Vietnam ) convicted him on March 29 , 1971 , of the premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians . On March 31 , 1971 , Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor at Fort Leavenworth , which includes the United States Disciplinary Barracks , the Department of Defense ' s only maximum security prison . Of the 26 officers and soldiers initially charged for their part in the My Lai Massacre or the subsequent cover - up , only Calley was convicted . Many saw My Lai as a direct result of the military ' s attrition strategy with its emphasis on " body counts " and " kill ratios . " Many in America were outraged by Calley ' s sentence ; Georgia ' s governor Jimmy Carter instituted " American Fighting Man ' s Day " and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on . Indiana ' s governor asked all state flags to be flown at half - staff for Calley , and Utah ' s and Mississippi ' s governors also disagreed with the verdict . The Arkansas , Kansas , Texas , New Jersey , and South Carolina legislatures requested clemency for Calley . Alabama ' s governor George Wallace visited Calley in the stockade and requested that Nixon pardon him . After the conviction , the White House received over 5000 telegrams ; the ratio was 100 to 1 in favor of leniency . In a telephone survey of the American public , 79 % disagreed with the verdict , 81 % believed that the life sentence Calley had received was too stern , and 69 % believed Calley had been made a scapegoat . Many others were outraged not at Calley ' s guilty verdict , but that he was the only one within the chain of command who was convicted . At the Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War January 31 - February 2 , 1971 , veterans expressed their outrage , including First Lieutenant William Crandell of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade , Americal Division : In defense of Calley , South Korean Vietnam Expeditionary Forces Commanding Officer Chae Myung Shin remarked " Calley tried to get revenge for the deaths of his troops . In a war , this is natural . " House arrest . On April 1 , 1971 , only a day after Calley was sentenced , U . S . President Richard Nixon ordered him transferred from Leavenworth prison to house arrest at Fort Benning , pending appeal . This leniency was protested by Melvin Laird , the Secretary of Defense . The prosecutor , Aubrey Daniel wrote , " The greatest tragedy of all will be if political expedience dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons . " On August 20 , 1971 , the convening authority — the Commanding General of Fort Benning — reduced Calley ' s sentence to 20 years . The Army Court of Military Review affirmed both the conviction and sentence ( 46 C . M . R . 1131 ( 1973 ) ) . The Secretary of the Army reviewed the sentence and findings and approved both , but in a separate clemency action commuted confinement to ten years . On May 3 , 1974 , President Nixon notified the Secretary that he had reviewed the case and determined he would take no further action in the matter . Ultimately , Calley served only three and a half years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning . He petitioned the federal district court for " habeas corpus " on February 11 , 1974 , which was granted on September 25 , 1974 , along with his immediate release , by federal judge J . Robert Elliott . Judge Elliott found that Calley ' s trial had been prejudiced by pretrial publicity , denial of subpoenas of certain defense witnesses , refusal of the United States House of Representatives to release testimony taken in executive session of its My Lai investigation , and inadequate notice of the charges . ( The judge had released Calley on bail on February 27 , 1974 , but an appeals court reversed it and returned Calley to U . S . Army custody on June 13 , 1974 . ) Later in 1974 , President Nixon tacitly issued Calley a limited Presidential Pardon . Consequently , his general court - martial conviction and dismissal from the U . S . Army were upheld , however , the prison sentence and subsequent parole obligations were commuted to time served , leaving Calley a free man . At his release , the press eagerly awaited his arrival at the prison ' s South Gate , as promised by the prison commandant . Instead , at Calley ' s request , he was released at West Gate and taken directly to the Fort Leavenworth airfield , where his escort had him flown home . The press were notified of his departure after the fact . The army appealed against Judge Elliott ' s decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and asked an appeals judge to stay Calley ' s immediate release , which was granted . However , the full Court upheld the release pending appeal and decided the entire court would hear the appeal ( normally not done in the first instance ) . The Army won a reversal of Judge Elliott ' s " habeas corpus " grant and a reinstatement of the judgement of the courts - martial , with 5 judges dissenting . ( Calley v . Callaway , 519 F . 2d 184 , 9 / 10 / 1975 ) . In a long and extremely detailed careful opinion , the reviewing court disagreed with Judge Elliott on the law and significantly on Elliott ' s scope of review of the courts martial proceedings . On November 9 , 1974 , the Court noted that although by now Calley had been " paroled " from confinement by the Army , that did not moot the " habeas corpus " proceedings . After release . Sometime in 2005 or 2006 , Calley divorced his wife Penny , whose father had employed him at the V . V . Vick jewelry store in Columbus , Georgia since 1975 , and moved to downtown Atlanta to live with his son , William Laws Calley III . In October 2007 , Calley agreed to be interviewed by the UK newspaper the " Daily Mail " to discuss the massacre , saying , " Meet me in the lobby of the nearest bank at opening time tomorrow , and give me a certified cheque for $ 25 , 000 , then I ' ll talk to you for precisely one hour . " When the journalist arrived to question Calley without a cheque , Calley left . On August 19 , 2009 , while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus , Calley issued an apology for his role in the My Lai massacre . Calley said :