what happened to the man that shot chris kyle
'American Sniper' Jury Finds Chris Kyle'south Killer Guilty of Murder
STEPHENVILLE, Tex. — Eddie Ray Routh, the mentally disturbed veteran who killed Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL marksman who inspired the motion-picture show "American Sniper," was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison house later on a jury here found him guilty of murder, rejecting his claims that he was legally insane at the fourth dimension.
Mr. Routh and his lawyers had argued that he was not guilty past reason of insanity and that he belonged not in prison but at a state mental infirmary. His ii-calendar week trial for the killings of Mr. Kyle and Mr. Kyle'southward friend Chad Littlefield in 2013 centered on Mr. Routh's country 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 only criminally responsible.
With the death penalty off the tabular array, the verdict that Mr. Routh was guilty of capital letter murder left him facing but one possible sentence, and the judge issued it minutes afterward the verdict was announced — life in prison without parole.
The judge announced the conclusion in a courtroom only three miles from a movie theater that had been playing "American Sniper" since Mr. Routh'south trial began on Feb. 11. The picture show and the trial made for a strange intersection of pop culture and criminal police. The verdict came two days after the movie lost the Academy Award for Best Movie to "Birdman," and Mr. Kyle'south widow, Taya Kyle, attended the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles on Sun, 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 probable that several jurors had seen the film earlier 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 ii and a half hours.
"Nosotros've waited two years for God to get justice for u.s. on behalf of our son," Judy Littlefield, Mr. Littlefield's mother, told reporters after the verdict. "And as always, God has proven to exist faithful."
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Reaction to 'American Sniper' Verdict
Judy Littlefield, the mother of Chad Littlefield, who was killed alongside Chris Kyle, spoke after the judge delivered a guilty verdict on Tuesday for Eddie Ray Routh in Stephenville, Tex.
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STEPHENVILLE, TEXAS SOUNDBITE) (English language) JASON CASHON, JUDGE, SAYING: "Nosotros are the jury plant the defendant Eddie Ray Routh guilty for the felony offensive capital murder as charged in the indictment." // "Having received and accepted the jury's verdict in this matter, past statute I will now impose sentencing this matter confinement for life in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice without the possibility of parole. That's the verdict of this courtroom and I will enter judgment accordingly. Yous may be seated this fourth dimension once again." // (SOUNDBITE) English language JUDY LITTLEFIELD Maxim: "We just want to say that, we've waited two years for god to go justice for us on behalf of our son. And as e'er god has proved to be true-blue. And we're so thrilled that we have the verdict that we have this night." //
Mr. Routh, 27, shot Mr. Kyle and Mr. Littlefield in the dorsum on February. 2, 2013, at a gun range nigh this pocket-size town 100 miles southwest of Dallas, after Mr. Routh's mother had asked Mr. Kyle to befriend her son. Later on serving in the Marines, Mr. Routh received a diagnosis of postal service-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, and relatives testified that he had been suicidal and paranoid in the months earlier 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 near why he shot Mr. Kyle, 38, and Mr. Littlefield, 35. He spoke of fearing for his life and believing that they were going to impale him or take his soul. He said that Mr. Littlefield was non shooting at the range and that "that'due south what got me riled upwards." He said he was offended that Mr. Kyle had not shaken his mitt when they met, was bothered past the smell of cologne in Mr. Kyle's truck, and was annoyed that the ii men did not talk to him on the drive to the range.
"It smelled similar sweet cologne," Mr. Routh told a reporter for The New Yorker in 2013, in a phone phone call from jail that was recorded. "I was smelling dear and detest. They were giving me some love and hate."
In finding Mr. Routh guilty and non legally insane, jurors appeared to have sided with the prosecutors, who portrayed Mr. Routh not as a sympathetic, troubled veteran but as a draconian killer who stopped at Taco Bong shortly after fleeing the scene and who knew his actions were incorrect, a crucial role of the legal test of insanity.
Mental health experts who examined Mr. Routh told the jurors that he had not been directly involved in gainsay in Republic of iraq and that he had lied about putting the bodies of babies in a mass grave in Haiti as function of an earthquake-relief deployment. Two experts who evaluated him for the prosecution testified that Mr. Routh was non insane and questioned whether he had exaggerated the trauma he experienced while in the Marines to get inability benefits and had tried to sound schizophrenic to get out of prison.
Mr. Routh had fabricated baroque statements that he believed people around him were half-pig, one-half-human, and that his co-workers at a cabinet store were cannibals who wanted to cook and eat him.
Epitome
Simply i of the prosecution'south experts who examined Mr. Routh, Randall Price, a Dallas forensic psychologist, testified that Mr. Routh's statements about sus scrofa people may take come not from psychosis merely from TV shows, including an episode from "Seinfeld" and a reality evidence called "Dominate Grunter," two of Mr. Routh's favorite programs. The prosecution's other good, Dr. Michael Arambula, a San Antonio forensic psychiatrist who is president of the Texas Medical Board, said that the delusions of schizophrenics oft had structure and details, simply that Mr. Routh'south statements about cannibals lacked specifics.
"It doesn't have content," Dr. Arambula said.
Hours subsequently the killings, later on 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. Cost 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 affliction are often reluctant to admit they take a problem.
"He was showing his hand," Dr. Arambula said. "He was looking to exit of what he had done."
Mr. Routh'southward lawyers defended his merits of schizophrenia. They chosen to the stand Dr. Mitchell H. Dunn, a forensic psychiatrist who spent more than than half dozen 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 considering he believed that they were "pig assassins" sent to kill him.
Dr. Dunn and Mr. Routh's lawyers used Mr. Kyle'due south own words to strengthen their indicate. Equally Mr. Routh sat in the back seat of Mr. Kyle's truck on the bulldoze to the range, Mr. Kyle sent a text message to Mr. Littlefield, who saturday side by side to him in the rider seat, writing, "This dude is directly-up nuts." Mr. Littlefield responded with a text of his own, asking Mr. Kyle to "lookout man my six," military machine parlance for "watch my dorsum." Dr. Dunn described the texts as "compelling bear witness."
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 force and the prosecution testified that they did not think that Mr. Routh had it. A prosecutor described Mr. Routh's PTSD equally "kind of a myth that's come up up in this case."
Mr. Routh, who worked every bit 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 house and other amenities. For the humanitarian mission in Republic of haiti, he was aboard a ship most of the fourth dimension, 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 ane fourth dimension that he and some other Marine thought they saw a body in the water, merely they weren't certain," Dr. Price said of Mr. Routh's deployment in Haiti in 2010.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/us/american-sniper-trial-jury-finds-ex-marine-guilty-of-murder.html
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