Eddie Ray Routh claimed to be legally insane when he killed
Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield in 2013. On Tuesday this week, a jury found him
guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison. Mr Routh, shot Mr Kyle
and Mr Littlefield in the back, a total of 13 times, at a gun range. Mr Routh's
mother had asked Mr Kyle personally to befriend her son, in an attempt to help
him after he returned from Iraq. After his service in the Marines, Mr Routh
received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis. His
relatives also testified that Mr Routh had suicidal and paranoid feelings in
the months before the fatal shooting.
Mr Routh used two of Mr Kyle's handguns to shoot Mr Kyle and
Mr Littlefield. The police played several videotaped and recorded interviews
with Mr Routh for the jurors. Mr Routh gave bizarre explanations for shooting
Mr Kyle and Mr Littlefield. He spoke of fearing for his life and was under the
impression that they were going to kill him at the range. 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, was bothered by the smell of cologne in Mr. Kyle’s truck, and was 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.”
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.
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’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.”
The jury's decision comes two days after the movie "American
Sniper", inspired by Mr Kyle's memoirs lost out on the Academy Award for Best
Film. Mr Kyle's widow Taya Kyle attended the ceremony. The movie, starring
Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller, and trial ran alongside each other in a rare
intersection between pop culture and criminal law.
Mr Kyle was a Navy SEAL Marine, a highly trained sniper who
had such deadly accuracy that insurgents nicknamed him the 'Devil of Ramadi.'
Clint Eastwood's adaption of his memoirs broke the box office on it's opening
weekend taking in $90.2m.
Since then, "American Sniper" went on to break Super
Bowl Weekend records with $31.9m. The movie perhaps played a major part in the
trial, with a movie theater showing "American Sniper" just three miles away from
the courthouse. It is very possible that jurors had seen the film before being
selected for trial.
“American Sniper” was widely
seen in the Stephenville area and Mr. Kyle attended the local university,
Tarleton State University, before he joined the Navy. Mr. Routh’s lawyers tried
to postpone the trial and move it out of Erath County, but the judge turned
them down.
“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.”
