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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/u...al-jury-finds-ex-marine-guilty-of-murder.html
Eddie Ray Routh, the mentally disturbed veteran who killed Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL marksman who inspired the movie “American Sniper,” was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison after a jury here found him guilty of murder, rejecting his claims that he was legally insane at the time.
Mr. Routh and his lawyers had argued that he was not guilty by reason of insanity and that he belonged not in prison but at a state mental hospital. His two-week trial for the killings of Mr. Kyle and Mr. Kyle’s friend Chad Littlefield in 2013 centered on Mr. Routh’s state of mind. Jurors had to decide whether Mr. Routh’s erratic behavior, his delusions about hybrid pig people and his heavy drug use were proof of insanity or evidence that he was troubled but criminally responsible.
With the death penalty off the table, the verdict that Mr. Routh was guilty of capital murder left him facing only one possible sentence, and the judge issued it minutes after the verdict was announced — life in prison without parole.
The judge announced the decision in a courtroom just three miles from a movie theater that had been playing “American Sniper” since Mr. Routh’s trial began on Feb. 11. The movie and the trial made for a strange intersection of pop culture and criminal law. The verdict came two days after the movie lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to “Birdman,” and Mr. Kyle’s widow, Taya Kyle, attended the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday, then the closing arguments here on Tuesday.
“American Sniper” was widely seen in the Stephenville area — Mr. Kyle attended the local university, Tarleton State University, before he joined the Navy — and it was likely that several jurors had seen the film before they were selected for the panel. Mr. Routh’s lawyers tried to postpone the trial and move it out of Erath County, but the judge turned them down.
The jury deliberated for less than two and a half hours.
“We’ve waited two years for God to get justice for us on behalf of our son,” Judy Littlefield, Mr. Littlefield’s mother, told reporters after the verdict. “And as always, God has proven to be faithful.”
Mr. Routh, 27, shot Mr. Kyle and Mr. Littlefield in the back on Feb. 2, 2013, at a gun range near this small town 100 miles southwest of Dallas, after Mr. Routh’s mother had asked Mr. Kyle to befriend her son. After serving in the Marines, Mr. Routh received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, and relatives testified that he had been suicidal and paranoid in the months before the shooting.
He used two of Mr. Kyle’s handguns to shoot Mr. Kyle and Mr. Littlefield 13 times, slaying a sniper who protected Marines in Iraq with such deadly accuracy that insurgents nicknamed him the “Devil of Ramadi.”
In several videotaped and recorded interviews and interactions with the police that were played for the jurors, Mr. Routh gave at times puzzling explanations about why he shot Mr. Kyle, 38, and Mr. Littlefield, 35. He spoke of fearing for his life and believing that they were going to kill him or take his soul. He said that Mr. Littlefield was not shooting at the range and that “that’s what got me riled up.” He said he was offended that Mr. Kyle had not shaken his hand when they met, bothered by the smell of cologne in Mr. Kyle’s truck and annoyed that the two men did not talk to him on the drive to the range.
“It smelled like sweet cologne,” Mr. Routh told a reporter for The New Yorker in 2013, in a phone call from jail that was recorded. “I was smelling love and hate. They were giving me some love and hate.”
In finding Mr. Routh guilty and not legally insane, jurors appeared to have sided with the prosecutors, who portrayed Mr. Routh not as a sympathetic, troubled veteran but as a callous killer who stopped at Taco Bell shortly after fleeing the scene and who knew his actions were wrong, a crucial part of the legal test of insanity.
Mental health experts who examined Mr. Routh told the jurors that he had not been directly involved in combat in Iraq and that he had lied about putting the bodies of babies in a mass grave in Haiti as part of an earthquake-relief deployment. Two experts who evaluated him for the prosecution testified that Mr. Routh was not insane and questioned whether he had exaggerated the trauma he experienced while in the Marines to get disability benefits and had tried to sound schizophrenic to get out of prison.
Mr. Routh had made bizarre statements that he believed people around him were half-pig, half-human, and that his co-workers at a cabinet shop were cannibals who wanted to cook and eat him.
But one of the prosecution’s experts who examined Mr. Routh, Randall Price, a Dallas forensic psychologist, testified that Mr. Routh’s statements about pig people may have come not from psychosis but from TV shows, including an episode from “Seinfeld” and a reality show called “Boss Hog,” two of Mr. Routh’s favorite programs. The prosecution’s other expert, Dr. Michael Arambula, a San Antonio forensic psychiatrist who is president of the Texas Medical Board, said that the delusions of schizophrenics often had structure and details, but that Mr. Routh’s statements about cannibals lacked specifics.
“It doesn’t have content,” Dr. Arambula said.
Hours after the killings, after Mr. Routh had been handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police car, he told officers that he was paranoid and schizophrenic. Such a statement, Dr. Price and Dr. Arambula said, indicated that Mr. Routh had known what he was doing and was trying to convince the authorities that he was insane, because people with severe mental illness are often reluctant to admit they have a problem.
“He was showing his hand,” Dr. Arambula said. “He was looking to get out of what he had done.”
Mr. Routh’s lawyers defended his claim of schizophrenia. They called to the stand Dr. Mitchell H. Dunn, a forensic psychiatrist who spent more than six hours with Mr. Routh last year and who testified that the defendant had been in a state of psychosis at the time of the attack and had shot the two men because he believed that they were “pig assassins” sent to kill him.
Dr. Dunn and Mr. Routh’s lawyers used Mr. Kyle’s own words to strengthen their point. As Mr. Routh sat in the back seat of Mr. Kyle’s truck on the drive to the range, Mr. Kyle sent a text message to Mr. Littlefield, who sat next to him in the passenger seat, writing, “This dude is straight-up nuts.” Mr. Littlefield responded with a text of his own, asking Mr. Kyle to “watch my six,” military parlance for “watch my back.” Dr. Dunn described the texts as “compelling evidence.”
Doctors at a Dallas veterans’ hospital who treated Mr. Routh before the shooting had said Mr. Routh had PTSD, but the three experts who evaluated him for the defense and the prosecution testified that they did not think that Mr. Routh had it. A prosecutor described Mr. Routh’s PTSD as “kind of a myth that’s come up in this case.”
Mr. Routh, who worked as a prison guard and a weapons-maintenance specialist known as an armorer while in the Marines, told the experts who examined him that he had spent time in Iraq at Joint Base Balad, which he described as “plush” because it had a movie theater and other amenities. For the humanitarian mission in Haiti, he was aboard a ship most of the time, and none of the three experts said they believed Mr. Routh’s claims that he had seen or come into contact with the bodies of dead babies there.
“He said there was one time that he and another Marine thought they saw a body in the water, but they weren’t sure,” Dr. Price said of Mr. Routh’s deployment in Haiti in 2010.
Eddie Ray Routh, the mentally disturbed veteran who killed Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL marksman who inspired the movie “American Sniper,” was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison after a jury here found him guilty of murder, rejecting his claims that he was legally insane at the time.
Mr. Routh and his lawyers had argued that he was not guilty by reason of insanity and that he belonged not in prison but at a state mental hospital. His two-week trial for the killings of Mr. Kyle and Mr. Kyle’s friend Chad Littlefield in 2013 centered on Mr. Routh’s state of mind. Jurors had to decide whether Mr. Routh’s erratic behavior, his delusions about hybrid pig people and his heavy drug use were proof of insanity or evidence that he was troubled but criminally responsible.
With the death penalty off the table, the verdict that Mr. Routh was guilty of capital murder left him facing only one possible sentence, and the judge issued it minutes after the verdict was announced — life in prison without parole.
The judge announced the decision in a courtroom just three miles from a movie theater that had been playing “American Sniper” since Mr. Routh’s trial began on Feb. 11. The movie and the trial made for a strange intersection of pop culture and criminal law. The verdict came two days after the movie lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to “Birdman,” and Mr. Kyle’s widow, Taya Kyle, attended the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday, then the closing arguments here on Tuesday.
“American Sniper” was widely seen in the Stephenville area — Mr. Kyle attended the local university, Tarleton State University, before he joined the Navy — and it was likely that several jurors had seen the film before they were selected for the panel. Mr. Routh’s lawyers tried to postpone the trial and move it out of Erath County, but the judge turned them down.
The jury deliberated for less than two and a half hours.
“We’ve waited two years for God to get justice for us on behalf of our son,” Judy Littlefield, Mr. Littlefield’s mother, told reporters after the verdict. “And as always, God has proven to be faithful.”
Mr. Routh, 27, shot Mr. Kyle and Mr. Littlefield in the back on Feb. 2, 2013, at a gun range near this small town 100 miles southwest of Dallas, after Mr. Routh’s mother had asked Mr. Kyle to befriend her son. After serving in the Marines, Mr. Routh received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, and relatives testified that he had been suicidal and paranoid in the months before the shooting.
He used two of Mr. Kyle’s handguns to shoot Mr. Kyle and Mr. Littlefield 13 times, slaying a sniper who protected Marines in Iraq with such deadly accuracy that insurgents nicknamed him the “Devil of Ramadi.”
In several videotaped and recorded interviews and interactions with the police that were played for the jurors, Mr. Routh gave at times puzzling explanations about why he shot Mr. Kyle, 38, and Mr. Littlefield, 35. He spoke of fearing for his life and believing that they were going to kill him or take his soul. He said that Mr. Littlefield was not shooting at the range and that “that’s what got me riled up.” He said he was offended that Mr. Kyle had not shaken his hand when they met, bothered by the smell of cologne in Mr. Kyle’s truck and annoyed that the two men did not talk to him on the drive to the range.
“It smelled like sweet cologne,” Mr. Routh told a reporter for The New Yorker in 2013, in a phone call from jail that was recorded. “I was smelling love and hate. They were giving me some love and hate.”
In finding Mr. Routh guilty and not legally insane, jurors appeared to have sided with the prosecutors, who portrayed Mr. Routh not as a sympathetic, troubled veteran but as a callous killer who stopped at Taco Bell shortly after fleeing the scene and who knew his actions were wrong, a crucial part of the legal test of insanity.
Mental health experts who examined Mr. Routh told the jurors that he had not been directly involved in combat in Iraq and that he had lied about putting the bodies of babies in a mass grave in Haiti as part of an earthquake-relief deployment. Two experts who evaluated him for the prosecution testified that Mr. Routh was not insane and questioned whether he had exaggerated the trauma he experienced while in the Marines to get disability benefits and had tried to sound schizophrenic to get out of prison.
Mr. Routh had made bizarre statements that he believed people around him were half-pig, half-human, and that his co-workers at a cabinet shop were cannibals who wanted to cook and eat him.
But one of the prosecution’s experts who examined Mr. Routh, Randall Price, a Dallas forensic psychologist, testified that Mr. Routh’s statements about pig people may have come not from psychosis but from TV shows, including an episode from “Seinfeld” and a reality show called “Boss Hog,” two of Mr. Routh’s favorite programs. The prosecution’s other expert, Dr. Michael Arambula, a San Antonio forensic psychiatrist who is president of the Texas Medical Board, said that the delusions of schizophrenics often had structure and details, but that Mr. Routh’s statements about cannibals lacked specifics.
“It doesn’t have content,” Dr. Arambula said.
Hours after the killings, after Mr. Routh had been handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police car, he told officers that he was paranoid and schizophrenic. Such a statement, Dr. Price and Dr. Arambula said, indicated that Mr. Routh had known what he was doing and was trying to convince the authorities that he was insane, because people with severe mental illness are often reluctant to admit they have a problem.
“He was showing his hand,” Dr. Arambula said. “He was looking to get out of what he had done.”
Mr. Routh’s lawyers defended his claim of schizophrenia. They called to the stand Dr. Mitchell H. Dunn, a forensic psychiatrist who spent more than six hours with Mr. Routh last year and who testified that the defendant had been in a state of psychosis at the time of the attack and had shot the two men because he believed that they were “pig assassins” sent to kill him.
Dr. Dunn and Mr. Routh’s lawyers used Mr. Kyle’s own words to strengthen their point. As Mr. Routh sat in the back seat of Mr. Kyle’s truck on the drive to the range, Mr. Kyle sent a text message to Mr. Littlefield, who sat next to him in the passenger seat, writing, “This dude is straight-up nuts.” Mr. Littlefield responded with a text of his own, asking Mr. Kyle to “watch my six,” military parlance for “watch my back.” Dr. Dunn described the texts as “compelling evidence.”
Doctors at a Dallas veterans’ hospital who treated Mr. Routh before the shooting had said Mr. Routh had PTSD, but the three experts who evaluated him for the defense and the prosecution testified that they did not think that Mr. Routh had it. A prosecutor described Mr. Routh’s PTSD as “kind of a myth that’s come up in this case.”
Mr. Routh, who worked as a prison guard and a weapons-maintenance specialist known as an armorer while in the Marines, told the experts who examined him that he had spent time in Iraq at Joint Base Balad, which he described as “plush” because it had a movie theater and other amenities. For the humanitarian mission in Haiti, he was aboard a ship most of the time, and none of the three experts said they believed Mr. Routh’s claims that he had seen or come into contact with the bodies of dead babies there.
“He said there was one time that he and another Marine thought they saw a body in the water, but they weren’t sure,” Dr. Price said of Mr. Routh’s deployment in Haiti in 2010.
