STEPHENVILLE, Texas (AP) — Jury selection is to begin Monday in the trial of the man accused of fatally shooting a former Navy SEAL who was depicted in the Oscar-nominated film “American Sniper.”
More than 260 potential jurors are set to report to district court in the Texas town of Stephenville, southwest of Fort Worth. Former Marine Eddie Ray Routh is charged with capital murder in the deaths of 38-year-old Chris Kyle and Kyle’s friend, 35-year-old Chad Littlefield, two years ago at a luxury resort’s shooting range in a rural area about 25 miles southeast of Stephenville. The trial is expected to start Wednesday.
The film “American Sniper” is based on Kyle’s 2012 memoir. He left the Navy in 2009 after four tours in Iraq.
Judge Jason Cashon told potential jurors during a jury qualification process last week that they wouldn’t be dismissed just for seeing the movie or reading the book.
Instead of a typical Erath County jury pool of 175, about 800 jury summonses were sent out, district clerk Wanda Pringle has said. Several hundred people who weren’t eliminated due to exemptions or other factors took part in last week’s screening. The group was narrowed during that process after potential jurors were dismissed for a variety of reasons, including some who said pretrial publicity had already led them to a decision in the case.
Defense attorneys plan to pursue an insanity defense. Prosecutors won’t seek the death penalty, but will ask for a sentence of life in prison without parole if Routh’s convicted.
Family members have said Routh, 27, struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after leaving the Marines in 2010. The small arms technician served in Iraq and was deployed to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Kyle took Routh to the shooting range after Routh’s mother asked if he could help her son.
About two hours after they arrived at Rough Creek Lodge and Resort on Feb. 2, 2013, an employee discovered the bodies of Kyle and Littlefield at the remote range.
In the meantime, authorities say Routh drove to his sister’s house in Kyle’s truck, telling her and her husband that he’d killed Kyle and Littlefield.
His sister told police that Routh “was out of his mind saying people were sucking his soul and that he could smell the pigs.”
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Not a great recruitment photo for the armed forces. Join the military, go to war, receive no support when you get back. One of the big problems with our country now is that we don’t feel the pain when the country goes to war. A small percentage have their lives turned upside down. But everyone else sticks a flag or yellow ribbon magnet on their SUV and heads to the mall thinking they are a patriot. (By the way, if you don’t know the difference between patriotism and nationalism, please figure it out).
I don’t know this man. Perhaps he had mental problems before he joined the Marines. Perhaps it was his experience in the Marines that caused some sort of break. Either way, if the 70% that doesn’t vote every election would just spend a few minutes of each day trying to give a shit about what’s going on in the country, maybe we wouldn’t constantly be at war and maybe the veterans who return from combat get the help they need and deserve.
Over at Salon, he’s their man of the year.
This, coming from prosecutors in the state that demanded the death penalty for Andrea Yates and then insisted on retrying her after her conviction was overturned on appeal. How very clement of them.
When Texas prosecutors won’t seek the death penalty, you know it’s not a capital case.
And some people object to the notion that mentally ill people should not be around guns.
Just another soldier sent to fight the oil wars and came home a broken man after shooting innocent people in a foreign land. For Kyle to have taken this broken man to a shooting range was the height of stupidity. This former marine needs professional help not Texas Prison.