The Routh trial
Y’all have been sending links to the reports that Eddie Routh, the fellow who shot and killed Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield over a year ago, hasn’t served in a position in the Marine Corps that would have lent itself to the theory presented by his defense attorney that Routh suffers from PTS. I agree and I said as much when this case presented itself. It’s old news. He was a unit armorer and he never left the wire.
Routh’s defense team doesn’t deny that he killed the two. I just watched a clip from his lawyer’s opening remarks and he said that Routh was so screwed up that he didn’t know that he’d done anything wrong. Well, that’s just BS.
In his phone call to his sister during his getaway, Routh told her that he’d murdered the two because he wanted Kyle’s truck. PTS doesn’t make people covet their neighbor’s truck. The lawyer continued that Routh thought that if he didn’t kill the other two, they would kill him – more BS. PTS doesn’t make you paranoid. You know what does make a person paranoid? Illegal drug abuse.
The folks at WarFighters talked to his recruiter, who claims that Routh came from a dysfunctional environment in which drug abuse was very common and his enlistment in the Marines didn’t change that.
The only people who blame their bad behavior on Post Traumatic Stress are people who don’t have PTS. Routh is an evil criminal who hides behind his military service. Neither him nor his lawyer are not doing real veterans with real PTS any favors with their defense of Routh’s behavior.
ADDED: According to the Washington Post, Chris Kyle had Routh nailed earlier in the day that he would be murdered;
On the way to the outdoor resort where former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle was killed, he sent a text message to the friend sitting next to him about the third man in the truck: “This dude is straight-up nuts.”
Category: Shitbags
His father also had stated earlier that he claimed that he got PTSD in Haiti after seeing dead bodies during hurricane clean up, not while deployed to a war zone.
Ahh… “Brian Williams Syndrome”
Hmcs(fmc) to put it lightly, you’re a fucking idiot and it has nothing to do with your Brian Williams quip. I think he is as full of shit as you are — you both speak on issues you don’t have real knowledge about.
A soldier can have ptsd from seeing dead bodies. I never had issues from being shot at, hitting ied’s or having my living area take 7 mortars within 15 or so meters from where I was jacking off. It was from my dead brothers in arms, kids, women, and innocent Iraqi’s who I cleaned up, carried, bagged, etc. it’s from not being able to do shit to help folks…So pardon me, but go fuck yourself you ignorant asshole.
Except I’m sure that he was referring to the verified fact that Eddie Ray Routh never left his ship in Haiti, according to the Marines that served with him so that claim is bullshit
Get a grip, Tim. All HMCS said was “Bryan Williams Syndrome.” Which means “seeing dead bodies where there are no dead bodies.” (It’s a reference to his Katrina comments.) And nobody gets the PTS from that. You used some pretty strong language that was totally uncalled for. You owe the man an apology.
Looks like your crocodile mouth has overloaded your hummingbird ass……In other words apologize to the man. Your conduct is completely off the charts…..
Tim- I see patients with PTSD all the time (both civilian and veterans) and you are right you can get PTSD from a lot of different experiences. As some of the comments above note, Eddie Routh was not tasked to go beyond the wire and his ship never took him onto Haitian soil. But we don’t know what he did in his life and he could have PTSD or perhaps he didn’t. Sitting behind a computer not one of us knows whether he had PTSD or not. That doesn’t matter, its whether he knew the difference between right and wrong that is at stake.
That being said your comments were pretty harsh esp since the man merely mentioned Brian Williams, who also “misremembered”. I thought that shit was funny. You got issues, man. Take care of them buddy.
what hurricane would that have been? We’re the Marines there during a hurricane? There was a tropical storm in 94, but it just rained a lot. No bodies laying around the next morning.
It appears that I too pulled a Brian Williams. It was an earthquake, not a hurricane. Haiti has been hit by so much stuff over the last few years that I forgot which disaster it was.
Fair enough. They can’t cath a break there. If it isn’t corrupt governments, it is Mother Nature. What a dump.
I think Routh is full of it, but I disagree with you and others who say that people who never leave the wire can’t get PTS. I left the wire on an almost daily basis, but some of the closest calls I had came at the hands of indirect fire while I was inside the wire.
One mortar killed six sailors on my base. That was the worst strike that I can remember, but we were shelled very frequently. That sort of thing can cause PTS even for someone like a cook who traditionally shouldn’t be at high risk for being killed or wounded.
Was that mortar incident in 2004? It wasn’t on our base but I remember hearing about something very similar when we were deployed. I seem to recall the sailors were SeaBees.
Yeah, it was late May 2004. I think maybe the 29th. If memory serves, it was a simultaneous strike that resulted in 7 KIA on opposite ends of the camp, the six sailors, who I do believe were Seabees, and an Infantry O-3 who was serving in one of the battalion’s S-shops.
Scratch some of that. According to Google it was May 3rd.
I agree however all of the Marines that served with Routh have made it clear that nothing happened anywhere near him while he was in Iraq AND he never left the boat in Haiti so never saw any dead bodies. The evidence indicates that he was seriously mentally defective before he ever joined the Marines
I can’t read about this trial. I end up screaming at the computer, which tends to upset my co-workers.
Routh needs to be put down like the rabid vermin he is.
“On the way to the outdoor resort where former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle was killed, he sent a text message to the friend sitting next to him about the third man in the truck: “This dude is straight-up nuts.””
Which makes this even more heartbreaking. Somebody as highly trained as Chief Kyle should have been on red alert to any funny business by this guy and he could have taken care of business no problem.
Routh stole Kyle’s truck from the range, right? So that would mean Kyle was sending a text while driving? This is a generational thing… to you younger guys this would not be a big deal, to some of us older guys we would probably wrap the truck around a pole trying to do that.
Soon after CLB-8 arrived at Camp Fallujah, Routh was sent to Camp Balad in order to support the prison…
There was a prison at Balad?
They were putting up new buildings there in 07, maybe. ?
Yeah, these is a(was?) a huge one just outside of Joint Base Balad, it was run by KBR and their flunkies. I think it was still called Anaconda?
Yea, Anaconda is the name, at least in ’08 anyways.
I don’t remember much happening there when u was at Rustimiyah.
U should be I. Apologies, stupid phone keyboard.
Balad was called Anaconda…what was the prison called?
(Some bases had separate Army and Air Force names…so LSA Adder, later Base Camp Adder, to the Army was Tallil to the Air Force; and what the Army called LSA Anaconda, the Air Force called Balad, at least at one time….to add to the confusion a lot of Army people used the Air Force names.)
Wasn’t that Bucca? I can’t remember….
Bucca was a detention facility, all right, but it wasn’t anywhere near Balad. I’m not aware that there was one at Balad.
Wikipedia says Camp Nama moved there, but describes it in such a way that this guy wouldn’t have been working there.
PTS my aunt sally. If this dude is nuts, but wanted the truck, and was willing to kill to get it, it shows that this prick deserves to be locked up. I might use it to mitigate the sentence if I were him, but as a defense…no fucking go.
“Does mental illness take away the ability to know right from wrong?” [Prosecutor Alan M.] Nash asked the jury. “I ask you to consider that.” I ask you to consider that? Holy shit. When Nash took the prosecutor’s job less than three years ago, he had years of prosecutorial experience under his belt, right? Wrong. He practiced family law privately, and took the occasional car accident and DWI that came his way. I’d say Routh is headed to the Nut House, not the Big House, after trial.
Texas has one of the most stingent requirmensts for not-guilty by reason of insanity.
Just because a person has a behavioral health diagnosis, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t understand the different between right and wrong.
Perfectly legitimate question to put in front of the jury during opening arguements.
He’s going to the Big House, as its very very hard to get a NGBROI verdict in Texas.
L4C: My objection to Nash’s comment is that he understated a major issue to be decided by the jury. He said to the jury, “I ask you to consider this.” That is a soft and casual request and was delivered as if it were an optional consideration for the jury. It is not. Texas has two tines on its insanity defense fork. The first is the obvious, which, in inexact terms, asks, “Was the defendant nuttier than a fruitcake?” The answer to that question will be yes. The second tine—the one of greatest import to the outcome of the trial–is whether, at the time the nuttier-than-a-fruitcake defendant shot and killed two men, he could have comported his behavior to law by chose not to do so. This irresistible impulse test, as it’s called, is not an option for the jury to weigh that question. It is key to the case and their duty to decide. It should have been delivered forcefully and clearly by Nash. Let’s hope he does so in his closing because it sure sounds to me that the inexperienced prosecutor missed the boat in his opening.
One other thing regarding Texas strict insanity defense. That is true only among those states which offer such a defense; some don’t at all. Now, that’s strict!
Actually, Ex-PH2 raises a point below that is worth mentioning here, regarding the stringent Texas law. Did you know that, unlike in other states, when one is found not guilty by reason of insanity, it is an acquittal, by law, in Texas? There is no “guilty but insane” or “not guilty but not legally responsible.” That is not to say that Texas defendants whose insanity pleas are successful walk away. Violent crimes result in nuthouse commitments–but, at a future date, the defendant can be found to be no longer a threat and released.
I remember a thread on here. After arriving at his Sister’s house. She said he told her “that he sold his soul for a Pickup “. Sounds like he knows right from wrong to me. Joe
The death penalty is already off the table, in a double murder trial. The prosecutor and judge should have saved the tax payers some money and put him in a mental institution for the rest of his life.
AFTER A FULL FRONTAL LOBOTOMY.
I meant to say “defense attorney”, not “prosecutor.” Sorry.
Pinto !!!
You should be sorry, I am absolutely offended !!!
BWAHAHAHAHAHA !!!
Kidding friends, just kidding, my inner lib got out of control, I had to beat it back into the darkest areas of my soul where it resides 99% of the time…
Wake me when they get to the sentencing phase.
The most reasonable response to this is ‘guilty but mentally ill’ if the defense wants to use mental illness as a defense. There are very few people who are gone so far ’round the bend that they have no awareness of their environment. ‘Guilty but mentally ill’ can put Routh in a state=run mental ward, until he’s deemed no longer mentally ill, and then serve his sentence, whatever it is.
But he should not be allowed to walk free. What other dreadful things will he do if he is not punished for what he did? He knew exactly what he was doing, and did it, and later admitted to his sister that he did it. This should not take more than a week to decide.
If the Death Penalty is off the table then he ought to get life without the possibility of parole. Texas is well known for having the fastest Express lane on their Death Row, but life without parole will leave him with every day of the rest of his life in prison to ask himself if it was worth it, and when he dies, he can ROT IN HELL alongside Murtha and “Hanoi Jane” Fonda!!
I agree with the death penalty. Let me state that first. In this case, however, this asshole needs to live to remember each day what he did for the rest of his pathetic life.
Besides, who would Bubba and Thor play with?
you forget the times we inhabit… even if they were seeking death and he was found guilty and sentenced to die, he likely wouldn’t get the needle for another 20 years at best.
Day one trial recap.
http://www.ibtimes.com/american-sniper-trial-first-day-court-reveals-new-details-about-eddie-ray-routh-death-1813138
What say you guys about some allegations that Routh guarded Muslim prisoners at Bilad and expressed sympathy for how they were ‘mistreated’ by US forces? Is it possible that although not converted to Islam he might have felt enough solidarity with these alleged prisoners that taking out the guy who killed beaucoup numbers of their cohorts was a righteous act to him? I totally believe his problem was not PTS. PTS doesn’t make you kill small animals and steal a vehicle. Just curious about the assessment you guys might proffer.
At the moment per my posts above I’m still skeptical that there was a “prison” (detention facility) at which he would’ve guarded such prisoners at Balad.
I mean, there might’ve been…it was a big base…but the detention facilities I know about (Bucca, Cropper, Taji) were somewhere else (according to Wikipedia, we handed Abu Ghraib over to the Iraqis in 2006). This story doesn’t suggest there were others. Wiki says that Camp Nama, a smaller one, moved to Balad at one time, but it also says it was run by Army Rangers, not Marines, so it doesn’t make sense to place Routh there.
Also there’s the fact that “traumatized by dirty evil American mistreatment of innocent Iraqis” is a line designed to play to the kind of people who’d want an excuse to let him off for this one. (Or designed by such people to make political points out of the case.) Possible? Leprechauns are possible. But…highly suspicious.
On the other hand, “crazy dirtbag killing someone because he covets the other man’s truck”…that fits real crimes, or attempted crimes, we see all the time. (Some of which end up in the “feel-good story of the day” right here on TAH.)
I hope he never makes it to trial.
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Nash, the prosecutor–with extensive experience in family law– royally screwed up. He put a Texas Ranger on the stand who stated that two viles containing a clear liquid were taken from Routh’s home following the murders. Um, no. The viles were submitted by the lab and contained what the lab uses for certain tests. The viles were not Routh’s and were not taken from his home. The defense moved for a mistrial. The judge denied it and instructed the jury to disregard the Texas Ranger’s testimony regarding the viles. For my money, the judge should have granted the mistrial. That way, the prosecutor would be able to hit the restart button on this mess. And, brother, does he need to do so. Instead, the prosecution has rested and the defense is having its go.
Looks like the verdict has been handed in.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/court-jury-reaches-verdict-in-american-sniper-murder-trial/ar-BBhV9Nz
That was breaking news online. I sent the link to Jonn.
More later.