Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne was convicted of the unpremeditated murder of a severely-wounded Iraqi civilian in Baghdad's deprived Sadr City district on August 18.
A pre-trial agreement limits sentencing to 10 years, without which the charge carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The murder of Kassim Hassan took place when US soldiers spotted a garbage truck apparently dropping homemade bombs in Sadr City, the capital's most populous Shia Muslim neighborhood.
The soldiers started shooting at the truck, which caught fire, and a severely wounded Hassan pulled himself out of the truck and fell to the ground, according to previous testimony.
"When I found him I came to the conclusion that he needed to be put out of his misery," Horne said. "I fired a shot into his head and his attempts to breathe ceased."
Judge Colonel Stephanie Browne asked Horne what his intention was when he fired the shot, to which Horne replied: "I wanted to end his suffering, it was my opinion that he could not be helped."
Horne was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder with two other soldiers, Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban and Second Lieutenant Erick Anderson, who have yet to stand trial.
Horne said that after seeing Hassan lying on the ground, he contacted Alban and Anderson.
Anderson "asked what I needed and I took him to see the victim. His response was 'What do you want to do'?"
"I can't leave him, I want to put him out of his misery. Anderson said 'So do it'."
Horne said that he shone a flashlight on Hassan and quoted Alban as saying: "My God, he's just a kid, he's not going to survive."
Horne said he then heard a burst of gunfire from Alban.
"I could hear gurgling sounds, attempts to breathe. I took a few steps back and fired one round... I hit him in the back of the head. There were no signs of life."
Anderson "agreed it needed to be done", said Horne, adding that when he consulted his superior officer on the wounded Iraqi it was "like a sanity check, to make sure we were both thinking in the same terms. We both had the assumption that he was suffering and wasn't going to survive."
"I didn't seek [Anderson] out for his blessing, I was informing him of my intentions. I didn't take [the 'so do it'] as an order, it was my responsibility."
Asked by Browne if Hassan had made any hostile gestures, Horne said "No".
A 10-member panel of Horne's fellow soldiers was due to agree on a sentence later on Friday.
© 2004 Agence France-Presse
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