CAMP PENDLETON -- Calling his client "a convenient fall guy for the government," a defense attorney told a military jury Thursday that 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson had no motive to cover up evidence of the killings of 24 civilians in the town of Haditha, Iraq.

Grayson is accused of ordering a junior Marine to delete from his personal computer more than three dozen photographs depicting the dead, women and very young children among them.

The junior Marine, Staff Sgt. Justin Laughner, told the jury Thursday that Grayson told him to get rid of the pictures three months after the Nov. 19, 2005, deaths -- and said that Grayson's order came during the early stages of media-sparked military investigations of the killings.

Laughner had photographed the bodies on the day of the deaths to determine if any of the victims were insurgents. He later uploaded them to his computer.

The deaths of two dozen Iraqi civilians at the hands of U.S. forces led to international condemnation, and, eventually, to criminal charges against four enlisted Marines accused as triggermen, as well as four officers accused of a role in the aftermath.

It is the largest war-crimes case involving civilian deaths since the start of the Iraq war.

The civilian killings took place after a roadside bombing killed one Marine and injured two others. In the moments and hours that followed the bombing, the Marines allegedly killed men, women and children as they sought the bombers and the people they said shot at them immediately after the explosion.

Charges against five of the eight accused Marines, including three of the alleged gunmen, have since been dropped. All of the accused were tied to Camp Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment.

Grayson's case is the first of the remaining Haditha charges to make it to trial.

On Thursday, Grayson appeared to listen intently, at times sitting with his hands folded on the table before him, during the first day of testimony in his court-martial. His supporters in the small Camp Pendleton courtroom numbered nearly a dozen people.

The 27-year-old Ohio native has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including obstruction of justice, lying to investigators and an accusation that he tried to get out of the military after charges were levied.

His civilian attorney, Joseph Cases, has said Grayson maintains that he did nothing wrong.

During his opening statement Thursday morning, Grayson's military attorney, Maj. William A. Santmyer, told the jury that Grayson was not present on the day of the killings or when Haditha city leaders asked military officers to investigate the slayings.

Santmyer said the intelligence officer's only connection to the incident was as a senior Marine to Laughner.

"Grayson is nothing more than a fall guy for a series of investigations conducted under intense media pressure," Santmyer told the seven jury members.

The jury members are all officers. Each has combat experience, ranging from deployments in the current conflicts to service in the 1991 Gulf War.

On Thursday, Laughner was the first to testify.

Laughner, one of the government's key witnesses, said that months later, when the heat was on from investigations into the possibility that the killings violated laws about war crimes, Grayson ordered him to delete the photos from his computer.

Laughner said he lied to five different investigators about the photographs in the months that followed, finally coming clean about it in August 2006.

"I knew I'd done something wrong with (deleting) those photographs," Laughner said.

Laughner said he had uploaded the photos to his personal laptop, which he knew was taboo, for better viewing and presentation to his seniors.

He said he kept the photos there in case anyone might need them later.

On cross-examination by Grayson's civilian attorney Joseph Casas, Laughner said he was, at the time of the incident, unfamiliar with a policy that bar Marines from keeping pictures of slain Iraqis.

On Thursday afternoon, a second Marine, Staff Sgt. Lee Senteno, testified that he also told Laughner to delete the photos because of the policy.

Grayson's trial is expected to last until the middle of next week.

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 740-5442 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.