Kyle put Routh in the backseat of his truck and drove two hours to a shooting range. While Routh sat among a small arsenal of guns and ammo, Kyle and his friend, both of whom Routh had never met, sent texts to each other about Routh, barely speaking to him. Kyle's text read, "This dude is straight up nuts." His friend in the passenger seat texted back: "He's right behind me, watch my back." Routh, suffering from severe mental illnesses, became convinced that the two men intended to kill him.
Dr. Phil: Inside the Mind of the Man Who Shot the "American Sniper" | March 16, 2015
"The ones in the sky are the ones that fly, you know what I mean, the pigs." - Eddie Ray Routh, February 2, 2013, Videotaped Police Interrogation
It took two years for Eddie Ray Routh to face murder charges in the killings of the former Navy SEAL
sniper Chris Kyle and his friend in 2013, and two weeks for his trial
to conclude. In the end, a jury of 10 women and two men took about two
hours, including breaking to eat dinner, to reject Mr. Routh’s claims that he was legally
insane, find him guilty and, in effect, send him to prison for life. The case attracted global attention as it coincided with the release of
the Oscar-nominated movie “American Sniper,” which is based on Mr.
Kyle’s experience in Iraq as the military’s deadliest sniper. At the time of the trial, the movie was the number one film at the box office, setting records, and and had been nominated for six Academy Awards (the awards ceremony was televised two days before the jury reached its verdict). “The seriousness of any murder case always depends in some part on who is dead.” [Source]
For Chris Kyle’s killer, Eddie Ray Routh, life in prison may make jail an asylum
The man who killed Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Based on what we know about former Marine Eddie Ray Routh, it is not hard to figure out how that might go.
In the two years since Routh has been jailed awaiting trial, he has attacked his guards and been placed on suicide watch. While in solitary confinement, he was reportedly strapped to a chair. In another episode, Routh ripped a television from the wall and tried to flood his cell with water from the shower.
Tumultuous would be an understatement.
During his trial, a defense expert concluded that Routh suffered from paranoid schizophrenia – and medicine for the disorder (along with recreational drugs) was found by police in Routh’s home. But that diagnosis was questioned and undercut
by the prosecutor’s expert witness, who argued instead that Routh knew
that killing “American Sniper” author Kyle and a friend, Chad
Littlefield, was wrong.
On March 9, 2015, Eddie Ray Routh was transferred from a state prison near Abilene, where he underwent various tests and an initial psychological screening, to Jester IV Unit, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice
psychiatric facility near Richmond, which has more advanced medical facilities.
According
to TDCJ spokesperson Jason Clark, during Routh's psychological
screening, it was determined he needed further evaluation, which is why
he was transported to the Jester IV Unit on Monday, March 9.
After further evaluation, Routh will be permanently assigned to begin serving his life sentence.
“We are disappointed in the verdict,” Eddie Routh's attorney, J. Warren St. John, told PEOPLE. “Mr. Routh is
still suffering from schizophrenia. He had a belief in his mind that
day. He believed that they were going to kill him. It was a real belief
that he had. We’re disappointed the jury didn’t give that any
consideration. They dismissed that.”
Warren St. John said that he believed more than half of the 12 jurors had seen “American Sniper,” which was released three weeks before the trial started in Stephenville, Texas.
“They stated prior to being on the jury it didn’t, but I clearly do think it had an effect,” Mr. St. John said. “He had the label of an American hero, ‘American Sniper,’ decorated war veteran. I think it affected their ability to be fair and impartial.”
“We don’t think that we got a fair trial in that small community, not that there’s not some good folks there,” Mr. St. John said. “It’s because of the publicity, and the movie came out right then, and the governor right before we started the trial had a ‘Chris Kyle Day.’ We thought it should be in a bigger jurisdiction where the jury pool would be more diverse than it was in Stephenville.”
The trial played out in a tight-knit, old-fashioned town that bills itself as the “Cowboy Capital of the World.”
Mr. Routh’s defense team had asked the court to postpone the trial and move it out of the county. The judge, Jason Cashon of Erath County District Court, denied their request, saying that the smoothness of the jury selection process showed that Mr. Routh could receive a fair trial.
Attorneys for Routh filed notice March 4, 2015, that they would appeal his capital murder conviction. Warren St. John also filed a motion for a new trial, arguing the conviction and sentence were contrary to law and evidence.
WFAA8 - Hours after Eddie Routh murdered Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield, a
Texas Ranger asked him if he understood his rights. Routh responded with
a vulgarity we can't print, but he never said "yes."
"You can
watch that 'til you're blue in the face, and never see a response from
him," lead defense attorney Warren St. John said on Wednesday.
St.
John fought to keep Routh's confession from being entered as evidence,
and he said that will be part of an appeal he expects to file within a
week.
We asked how Routh took the guilty verdict, knowing he now faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
"Well,
because he's on anti-psychotic medicine, his personality is somewhat
flat; he's not happy with it," St. John said on February 25, 2015.
He added
that Routh showed no emotion throughout the trial because of the
medicine, and because lawyers told him to stay calm. Routh took his
medications every afternoon at 2 o'clock.
St. John has handled
nine death penalty cases and about two dozen capital murders cases that
don't involve the possibility of execution, like Routh's. He had
expected the jury to take more time to reach its decision on Tuesday; it
took them just over two hours.
"I wasn't surprised by the
verdict, just based on the overall tragedy of what happened. I was very
disappointed that the jury reached a conclusion so fast. We were very
kind of shocked by that," he said.
St.
John added that he respected the verdict, but disagreed with it. He
also praised Judge Jason Cashon's handling of the case, and the work of
Erath County District Attorney Alan Nash and assistant Texas Attorney
General Jane Starnes.
The defense lawyer believes Chris Kyle's
fame definitely made it harder to try the case in Stephenville — or
anywhere else — especially since the former Navy SEAL was such a revered
veteran who died as he lived: helping others, often at his own risk.
On
the other hand, St. John said Eddie Routh hurt his own defense.
"The
first thing you tell every client you ever have is, 'Don't speak to
anyone.' You can't control what they do," he said.
Routh talked repeatedly to a New Yorker magazine reporter. Prosecutors played their conversations for the jury.
Routh explained that he waited for an opportune moment to shoot Chris Kyle.
"It
was like I started shooting, and he was just finishing a magazine...
just finished his last shell," Routh said in the profanity-laced
interview.
Prosecutors said the fact that Routh waited until Chris Kyle's gun was empty is further proof he knew exactly what he was doing.
Jurors clearly agreed.
Warren
St. John remains convinced that Routh was psychotic due to severe
mental illness. Texas law does not permit jurors to be told that
defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity are sent to a mental
hospital... not set free.
Eddie Routh has been held for two years in a
single cell in the Erath County jail. His attorney fears that once
Routh gets to prison, inmates could make him a target for murdering an
American hero.
styrk - Attorneys for Eddie Ray Routh filed a formal appeal on March 4, 2015 of his capital murder conviction in the deaths of former Navy
SEAL Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield.
Fort Worth attorney J. Warren St. John, who led the defense for Routh
in the two-week trial last month, filed the appeal with the Erath
County court, saying the jury's guilty verdict did not match the law or
the evidence in the case.
The defense had asked that the trial be moved out of Stephenville,
arguing that the popularity of the American Sniper movie based on Kyle's
best-selling book would make it impossible for Routh to get a fair
trial.
Routh, 27, of Lancaster, a former Marine corporal trained to repair
small arms, was convicted Feb. 24 by an Erath County jury that
deliberated less than three hours. He was automatically sentenced to
life in prison without parole, because prosecutors did not seek the
death penalty.
Jurors rejected Routh's insanity defense. Defense attorneys presented
evidence that Routh was suffering from schizophrenia and other mental
illness when he shot Kyle and Littlefield, and that he did not know what
he had done was wrong.
District Attorney Alan Nash, however, who was joined in prosecuting
the case by Assistant Attorney General Jane Starnes, presented evidence
that Routh confessed to investigators that he knew what he had done was
wrong. They argued that he was suffering from psychosis brought on by
heavy abuse of marijuana and alcohol.
On February 2, 2013 Chris Kyle and his
friend Chad Littlefield were fatally shot on a Texas gun range. Former marine Eddie Ray Routh,
who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis and severe mental illness, confessed to the murders. Routh had been a small
arms technician who served in Iraq and was
deployed to earthquake-ravaged Haiti before leaving the Marines in 2010.
Eddie Routh's mother, who worked as an aide at the Kyle kids' school,
was the person who asked Kyle to take on her son in a program to help
rehabilitate wounded and troubled veterans through exercise. The
program, sponsored by Fitness Cares Foundation, was established in 2011; however, the company, Fitness Cares, or FITCO, "an elite fitness equipment industry," approached Kyle in 2012 to help promote the foundation by using his name to raise funds. In 2013,
the foundation raised $263,067 in private donations: $112,603 (or 43%
of funds raised) was used to purchase fitness equipment from the
company, FITCO, to then give to veterans; and $96,583 (or 37% of funds
raised) was spent on indirect costs/overhead (which included $26,485 for
salaries, although none of the seven directors are paid, and a
suspicious $11,406 for payroll taxes); leaving $53,881 (or 20% of funds
raised) in donations to be invested ($10,014 of the fund balance was
used to payoff expenses that exceeded revenue from the previous year).
Kyle agreed to work with Routh a week before the fateful trip to the gun
range. Kyle and his neighbor and hunting buddy, Chad Littlefield — a
facilities and logistics manager with a lab in DeSoto, Texas, who was
not a veteran — decided to take Routh shooting on February 2, 2013.
However, no one in Routh's inner circle, including Routh himself, knew
that Kyle was planning to pick him up that day: Kyle made multiple calls to Routh's home phone that day, the last call being around noon, before he pulled up in Routh's driveway at 1:07 p.m.
For years the Routh family
sought help through the Veterans Health Administration but found
themselves adrift in a system struggling to meet the demands spurred by a
decade of war and the aging veterans of past conflicts.
In 2004, the V.A. Inspector General called the Dallas facility the worst
in the nation; in 2012, a Dallas TV station interviewed veterans who
alleged that the facility was so poor that it put “lives at risk.”
Routh had been in and out of a psychiatric hospital and the Veterans
Affairs hospital in Dallas three times in the months leading up to the killings, and area police reports documented Routh’s mental problems.
Six months before a hunting guide found Kyle and Littlefield's bodies,
police caught up with a shirtless, shoeless Routh walking
the streets of his hometown. He was crying and smelled of alcohol,
police said. His mother told police that Routh had just had an argument
with his father who said he was going to sell Routh's gun. Routh left
the house, threatening to "blow his brains out," she said.
The former Marine was suffering from PTSD, though his family didn't
understand what he was going through, according to a September 2, 2012,
police report.
He would be placed in protective custody and sent to Green Oaks Hospital in Dallas for mental evaluation.
On January 19, 2013, Routh and his
girlfriend were hanging around her apartment when he fell into a state
of paranoia. He began ranting to her and her roommate about
government-surveillance activities. He once told a friend that the
helicopters overhead were watching him. Outbursts of this nature had
become more frequent. He made sure to cover the camera on his computer
(“He felt very strongly about that,” his mother said), and confided to
family and friends, “They know what we’re doing.” He also worried that
he would be forced to return to Iraq. And yet, for all his distress,
Routh sometimes contemplated going back into the service. “He had a lot
of guilt that he wasn’t still in the Marines, overseas helping people,”
his girlfriend said.
Inside the apartment, Routh began pacing in front of the door,
clutching a knife. He said that he was prepared to defend her from
government agents who were out to get them. For hours, she tried,
unsuccessfully, to calm him. Finally, her roommate texted the police,
who arrested Routh and took him to Green Oaks psychiatric hospital. He was transferred to the
Dallas V.A. the next day.
After Routh arrived at the Dallas V.A., his mother and girlfriend
visited him in the evenings. A week later, he did not seem much better.
He was taking several medications, and his mother felt that he could
hardly carry on a conversation. She urged the doctors to keep him
hospitalized, at least until he was stable. Ignoring his mother's
request, the V.A. discharged Routh the next day. When his mother drove
to the V.A. to pick up her son, he was already out, wandering in the
parking lot. She brought him home and told him about Chris Kyle. “I
said, ‘This guy has a big reputation. He’s a really good man and he
really wants to help you.’ And then he’s like, ‘Mom, that is so
awesome’,” his mother recalled. “Eddie was happy. He could feel that
somebody wanted to help him, somebody that understood better than me.”
Routh and His Girlfriend, Who Met on a Dating Website in March 2012
The next few days were difficult. Routh's girlfriend, who is Catholic,
said he was fixated on “demons and devils.” He went with her to Mass on
Sunday, hoping that it would help him. At home with his mother, Routh
fluctuated between being angry and wound up, and being dazed and
emotionless. “I could see him having flashbacks,” his mother recalled.
“You know when you’re daydreaming? You just kind of get that glaze in
your eyes? That was what was happening to Eddie. I knew what he was
seeing was not good, ’cause he looked like a scared little child. He
didn’t look like a man.” At night, he popped out of bed at the slightest
sound, running into his mother’s bedroom to make sure that she was
safe. “I thought someone was trying to get you,” he told her. His mother
said that during the day “he still wasn’t able to carry on a good
conversation. He wasn’t making good sense. He was crying a lot. He would
come lay down in our bedroom. We’d bring in the dog and lay in the bed
and he’d say, ‘Mom, will you hold my hand? I’m so scared. I don’t feel
good. I’m not good.’ ” As she held him, Routh said, “I just wish you
could be in my head for just a second, just so you could know what I’m
feeling like.” “I wish I could,” she told him. “I would take it from
you.”
On January 30, 2013, Routh's mother brought him back to the V.A., for a
follow-up appointment. As a psychiatrist reviewed his chart, he noted
that Routh had been prescribed only half the recommended dosage of
risperidone — a powerful antipsychotic that has been widely used in V.A.
hospitals to treat PTSD. The psychiatrist adjusted the prescription and
ordered the medication to be sent to the Routh house in two days.
Routh's mother was livid. When the psychiatrist questioned Routh, he
looked to his mom. “He just wasn’t capable of speaking for himself,” she told the reporter.
She explained to the psychiatrist that Routh wasn’t sleeping and
“couldn’t think straight.” She pleaded with the psychiatrist to readmit
him to the hospital, where “he’s not going to be a danger to others or
to himself.” But the psychiatrist, according to Routh's mother, shook
his head and said that hospitalization wasn’t necessary. Routh's mother
then asked the psychiatrist if he could refer Routh to a residential
program for people with PTSD, in Waco, Texas. The psychiatrist told her,
“He’s not stable enough for that program.” He instructed Routh to come
back in two weeks. His mother recalled, “I thought, Two weeks! That’s a
long time. I told the doctor, ‘You know, he can’t even answer your
questions! He can’t even carry on a conversation. I really think he
needs to be in the hospital’.”
On February 2, 2013, Kyle, driving his custom, black Ford-350 truck, and
Littlefield, who was in the passenger's seat, picked up Routh at his
home and drove him two hours to a shooting range. Routh was looking
forward to an excursion with Kyle: “He
needed someone to validate what he was feeling, that it was O.K. for
other people to go through it,” his girlfriend said.
However, when Routh awoke on February 2, 2013, he, along with his
girlfriend and his parents (who were out of town), did not know Kyle was
coming by to pick him up. Kyle called Routh at him home multiple times
that day, the last time at 12:30 p.m., before pulling into his driveway
at 1:07 p.m.
While Routh sat in the backseat by himself with a small arsenal of guns
and ammo, Kyle and his friend Littlefield, both of whom Routh had never
met, sent text messages to each other about him, barely speaking to
Routh. Kyle's text to Littlefield read, "This dude is straight up nuts."
Littlefield texted back: "He's [sitting] right behind me, watch my 6," a
military term for "watch my back." During the drive, Routh, who was
under psychiatric care and taking anti-psychotic prescription
medications (one being Risperidone, used to treat schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder, with side effects that include aggressive behavior,
agitation and anxiety), became convinced that the two men intended to
kill him.
When they arrived at the resort around 3 PM, they turned up a snaking,
3-mile road toward the lodge, where Kyle parked in front of the
main lodge and went inside with Littlefield to register, leaving Routh
alone in the backseat of the truck. Then then drove another few miles to
the remote shooting range. Kyle was given "exclusive access to the
range" as was the case
whenever "he came out" to the resort. On the day of the fatal shootings,
he said he was going to use the range for about 45 minutes, a resort
employee testified.
Shortly after arriving at the the shooting range, Kyle and Littlefield were shot at close range
multiple times. With one handgun, Kyle was shot six times, including
one shot that struck several major arteries and damaged his lungs. One
shot went through his cheek and struck his spinal cord. Several of the
shots were considered “rapidly fatal.” With another handgun, Littlefield
was shot seven times, including four that would have been instantly
fatal. One bullet went through the top of his head, indicating it was
likely fired while Littlefield was on his knees. Testimony from the
person who conducted the autopsies
proves that all the shots, except maybe one, went through his front
side. One of those shots traveled through his mid-section, causing
massive internal bleeding.
The shot to the palm of his left hand exited the front of his hand and
could have been one of the shots that hit his face, neck and chest. The
shot that the coroner said entered through his back seemed more likely
to have entered from the front upper chest, exiting through his lower
back. For two years prosecutors claimed that Kyle was shot four times in
the back and Littlefield was shot five times in the back, but this is
false. They continued to propagate this lie before the jury during testimony in Eddie Ray Routh's murder trial in February 2015.
Barnard said the neither Kyle nor Littlefield had a chance of survival. Click here
to read the testimony of Dr. Jeffery Barnard, who conducted the
autopsies on Kyle and Littlefield, and Howard Ryan, a forensic operation
specialist from New Jersey. Both testified for the prosecution.
The
bodies were found by a hunting guide around 5 PM.
Littlefield's body was found on a shooting platform, while Kyle's body
was found a few yards away in the dirt in front of the elevated
platform. "Chris was face-down with his nose in the dirt," said a former resort employee who discovered the bodies. "Chad was
on the platform on his back." Both men were armed
with .45-caliber 1911-style pistols when they were killed, but neither
gun had been unholstered or fired, and the safeties were still on.
Prosecutors have not elaborated on how Routh initiated the attack or
whether he opened fire on the
two men at the same time. Kyle was killed with a .45-caliber pistol,
while Littlefield was shot with a 9mm Sig Sauer handgun. Both guns
belonged to Kyle, and the Sig Sauer was found in Routh’s possession later that night. The only loaded weapons at the crime scene were the two 1911-style handguns that were in Kyle and Littlefield's waistband holsters, with their safeties on.
Shooting Platform at Crime Scene: Kyle and Littlefield's Bodies Cropped from Image
After leaving the scene in Kyle's truck,
Routh stopped briefly at his uncle's house and then drove to the home
of his sister and brother-in-law, 65 miles away from the gun range. He
admitted to the killings and told his sister, "People were sucking his
soul." He left their home in Kyle's truck and headed to his parents'
small home in Lancaster, where he had been living. He’d gone home to get his dog
and planned to drive to Oklahoma. His sister called 911, telling the
operator he claimed to have killed two men. "He said that he killed two
guys. They went out to a shooting range. Like, he's all crazy. He's
f***ing psychotic. I'm sorry for my language."
Routh's sister, who drove with her husband to the police station
immediately after calling 911, told police that her brother "was out of
his mind, saying people were sucking his soul and that he could smell
the pigs."
Routh's sister told The New Yorker
that her brother said “he killed them” — Kyle and Littlefield — “before
they could kill him; he said he couldn’t trust anyone anymore.”
Routh's Sister's Terrified 911 Call
In Routh's sister's 911 call (video above), she does not say that her
brother told her that "I sold my soul for a truck," which was reported
by the mainstream media. The person who said that is Randy Fowler, an
investigator with the Erath County Sheriff’s Department in Texas. Fowler wrote in the affidavit: "Routh drove to his sister’s home in Midlothian, about 50 miles
from the gun range where the shooting took place, shortly after the
incident. Routh was driving what his sister, Laura Blevins, described as
a 'big dark or black Ford F-250 pickup that she had never seen before.' It substantiated Routh’s claim that he
had murdered Chris Kyle and his friend, and he told the Blevinses
that he had killed Kyle and that he had 'traded his soul for a new
truck'." Routh's sister told The New Yorker
that her brother asked her if the world was freezing over, then
announced that he had a new truck. She then asked if he had traded in
his car, a Volkswagen Beetle; he said no, but added, “I sold my soul for
a truck.” It is this statement that the defense is using as
a motivation for the crime, rather than insanity due to Routh's severe
mental illnesses. It is important to note that there was no other
vehicle at the crime scene when Routh drove off in Kyle's truck, so it
was the only vehicle he could take to flee the scene.
Officers were waiting for Routh that evening when he arrived at his parent's home. A police video displayed for the jury at Routh's trial,
which began on February 11, 2015, showed police at Routh's home trying
to coax him from Kyle's pickup. Officers in the video are seen trying to
talk Routh into surrendering as he makes comments such as: "The
[expletive deleted] anarchy has been killing the world," "I can
feel everybody feeding on my soul," "Is this about hell walking on earth
right now?," "Is voodoo all around us?," and "I didn't sleep a wink
last night at all." He also expressed concerns about
being stalked by cats and at one point announced, "I need to take a
nap"
and said he wanted his parents to come home (his parent were out of town). "There's no trust anymore," the
video showed Routh saying.
Police Dashboard Camera Show Officers Arresting Eddie Ray Routh
One police officer, who happened to be a neighbor of Routh’s, was
recorded by his body camera telling him: “I don’t want to hurt you,
buddy. We all grew up together here.” Routh reportedly told the police
officer: “It happened so fast. I don’t know if I’m going insane.” Kyle
refused to leave the vehicle and eventually sped off with police in
pursuit. He stopped six minutes later after a police vehicle rammed into
the truck. Police video showed Routh opening the driver's-side door,
emerging with his hands up, and sinking to the ground. He surrendered
peacefully, police said. An officer is seen on the footage giving himself the sign of the cross.
Routh told police: "It wasn't a want to. It was a need to, to get out of
that situation out there today or I was going to be the one out there
to get my head shot off."
Weapons and Shooting Platform at Crime Scene
Weapons, Shooting Platform and Crime Scene Markers
Kyle's Custom, Black Ford-350 at Crime Lab
"When he took their lives, he was in the grip of a psychosis," Routh's court-appointed defense attorney said,
"a psychosis so severe that he did not know what he was doing was
wrong." The defense said Routh's psychosis kicked in during the two-hour
drive to the gun range as he sat amid "an arsenal" of guns large enough
to support "a small army." During the drive, Routh apparently became
convinced that the two men intended to kill him. Their texting back and
forth to each other about Routh as he watched from the back seat, no
doubt, had something to do with it. "He thought he had to take their
lives because he was in danger," Routh's attorney said.
According to an affidavit, Routh told his brother-in-law he "couldn't trust them, so he killed them before they could kill him."
According to reports
on the opening days of his trial, Routh had a "fitful" last night
before the killings. He proposed to his girlfriend (who accepted
the proposal) but also paced
throughout the home, warning her not to speak out loud "because people
were listening."
The prosecution is alleging that Routh drank whiskey that fateful
morning and may have smoked "wet" marijuana
(cannabis laced with formaldehyde) before getting into Kyle's truck. A
Texas ranger found Routh's anti-psychotic prescription medications (one
being Risperidone, used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,
with side effects that include aggressive behavior, agitation and
anxiety), a whiskey bottle on the table, a bong, and rolling papers when
he searched Routh's home after the arrest. However, on cross
examination, the ranger said he saw no evidence that Routh was
intoxicated or under drug influence at time of his arrest.
Routh's
uncle, James Watson, 45, testifying for the prosecution, said the two
of them smoked non-laced marijuana between 30 minutes and an hour and a
half before Routh left to go to the gun range, and said that they may
have had whiskey that morning. Watson was at Routh's home because
Routh's
then-girlfriend was concerned for his well-being after the two had
argued that morning. The previous evening, Routh had proposed to Jen. “We were in the
kitchen,” she recalled. “I was getting him his medicine. I turned
around, and he got to one knee and asked me to marry him.” Routh didn’t
have a ring — he was broke — but pledged to save up for one. Jen accepted
the proposal, and spent the night at Routh's home. They got into an argument the next morning, however, and she
left around 10 AM.
Prosecutors,
trying to support their contention that Routh's motivation for the
crime was to steal Kyle's truck, also had Routh's uncle testify about
the truck. After Routh left the crime scene, he first drove to his
uncle's home, where he stopped briefly. Watson testified that Rough
said: "Check out my truck. I'm driving a dead man’s truck." On the "dead
man's truck" comment, Watson testified: "I thought he was talking about
himself... he would often make bizarre comments like that."
On
deferred adjudication for assault on a paramedic in Johnson County,
Texas, Watson denies he made any deal with prosecutors. Watson testified
that he grew up with Routh and that he learned about religion and
morality from his family. “We’re God-fearing people," he said. When the
prosecutor asked, "Does he have a sense of morality?," Watson replied:
"Yes, he does." When the prosecutor asked, "Does he know right from
wrong?," Watson replied, "Yes, he does."
Routh’s attorney is making the case that his client is
not guilty by reason of insanity. In opening statements he said that
Routh was suffering from severe
mental illness at the time of the crime and could not tell right from
wrong. Prosecutors have described Routh as a troubled drug user who used
marijuana and whiskey the day of the killings, but say he knew right
from wrong despite any history of mental illnesses.
Part of the grand jury indictment of Eddie Ray Routh, handed down on July 24, 2013, was the judge’s gag order,
effective immediately:
"Due to the 'unusually emotional nature' of the
case, its 'unique nature of security issues' and the 'extensive local
and national media coverage' that it has already received, the judge
directed all relevant law enforcement and judicial bodies, as well as
Routh and his family, to refrain from any interaction with the media
that might 'interfere with the defendant’s right to a fair trial'."
Despite the gag order, Routh’s lawyer was able to say his client will
plead not guilty by reason of insanity and that he planned to present
evidence Routh was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder when he
killed Kyle and Littlefield. The gag order applied
only to the Routh family: the Kyle and Littlefield families were free to
speak to the media. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in January 2015, widow Taya Kyle said she believes the PTSD defense is a cop out.
Houston criminal defense attorney George Parnham said
Routh — who has been imprisoned since the 2013 murders — is at a
disadvantage because of the gag order issued on his family members and
attorneys in 2013. At the time, the judge said he was issuing it because
of the “unusually emotional nature of the issues involved in the case.”
In light of the movie, Parnham said the gag order is now unfair. He
explained: “It’s going to be very difficult for him to get a fair trial,
not only because of the movie, but because of the media surrounding the
movie. Mr. Kyle
is a hero in many people’s eyes. Due to the fact that this movie has
gained intense public attention, it’s doubtful that a fair jury can be
selected anywhere.” Anticipating that finding an unbiased jury would be
difficult, Kyle's court-appointed attorney filed a motion in 2013 to
change the location of the trial, but it
was denied.
Before the gag order, on February 27, 2013,
it was reported
that Jodi Routh, Eddie Ray Routh's mother, thanked the family of Chris
Kyle for trying to help her son: "Jodi Routh hoped Chris Kyle could help
her son 25-year-old, who was suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder. Eddie Routh is currently on medication and finally agreed to
see his family. Today it was his mother Jodi and father Raymond who
released an statement, expressing their sorrow their son caused to the
Kyles and Littlefields, as well as thanking Kyle for trying to help her
son." The family issued the following statement:
"Raymond
and I want to express our deepest condolences to the Kyle and
Littlefield families. We are incredibly heartbroken for your loss.
We wish we could thank Chris Kyle for his genuine interest in
helping our son overcome his battle with Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder.
We want others with PTSD to know their struggle is recognized and we
hope this tragedy will somehow help in getting greater care for and
assistance to those in need.
No words can truly express the sorrow we feel for the Kyles and
Littlefields, their extended family and friends. Our thoughts and
prayers continue to be with you all."
– The Routh Family
Brian J. Klingenberg · Survey Technician at Premier Factory Safety"
"Routh is a friend of mine, deployed with him and was in the same units as he was. Something must have spooked him, it's very unlike his personality to be violent..."
Corey Smalley, Waynesburg, United States:
"I lived and slept next to Eddie while in Iraq when he was not on prison duty. Although Eddie was like my brother, what he did is wrong and he needs to pay for it. If the people writing this crap [lies about Eddie] want the truth, look me up on Facebook (Corey Smalley). I will be glad to help you understand."
