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William Calley Convicted

March 29, 1971

Calley salutes the president of the six-officer jury after the guilty verdict was announced, 29 Marc
Calley salutes the president of the six-officer jury after the guilty verdict was announced, 29 Marc
Calley salutes the president of the six-officer jury after the guilty verdict was announced, 29 March 1971.

After a four-month-long court martial, Lieutenant William Calley is convicted of murder for his role in the My Lai massacre. He is sentenced to life in prison. Calley’s sentence is reduced twice in ensuing months and years. He is ultimately paroled and released in 1974.1

James S. Olson, ed., Historical Dictionary of the 1970s (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 71; Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 149; Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Scott Patrick Johnson, Trials of the Century (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 463. James Stuart Olson and Randy Roberts, eds., Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945–2010 (6th edition; Oxford, Eng.: Wiley and Blackwell, 2014), 205. (Note: there are a host of different dates given for when Calley was paroled, depending on the source, ranging from March 1974 to November 1975. 1974 seems to be quoted more frequently.)