The handsome, 31-year-old lieutenant rose from his wheel chair at Camp Anza, Calif, and heard the verdict without batting an eye. The verdict: death by hanging.
Lieut. Beaufort G. Swancutt, crippled by a policeman's bullet but recovering, told a reporter: "I am not afraid to die." Then he was rolled back to confinement. It was the first such sentence voted by a court-martial on an officer in World War II. The wheels of review that will finally take his case to the President began to grind.
Beaufort Swancutt, an infantry officer with a disordered, unstable record that had somehow escaped the notice...