Convicted murderer Spec. Ronald A. Gray leaving a Fort Bragg courtroom escorted by Ft. Bragg Military Police, April 6, 1988.
Four years after Ronald Gray enlisted in the Army, in 1984 at age 18, he was tried by a military court for 22 felonies related to murder and rape. Between December 1986 and January 1987, while stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Gray was accused of raping three women and murdering two of them. He later pleaded guilty to these and other crimes. In April 1988, after two hours of deliberations, a court-martial panel convicted Gray of the two murders, three rapes and an attempted murder. He was demoted, dishonorably discharged from the Army and unanimously sentenced to die, before being placed on death row at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. His appeal for the Supreme Court to hear his case was denied in 2001; in July 2008, President Bush approved the military’s request to execute Gray. If put to death, Gray would be the first American soldier executed since John A. Bennett in 1961.