E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Anthony Bolante / Reuters
Attorney John Henry Browne, right, discusses the case of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales in Seatttle on Friday. With Browne is associate counsels Emily Gause.
An attorney for Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who has been charged with killing 17 Afghan civilians in two villages, said Friday that the defense team is “facing an almost complete information blackout from the government,” which is having a “devastating effect” on their investigation.
Bales, a 38-year-old father of two, is accused of creeping into the villages at night on March 11 and attacking the villagers. The Army has charged him with 17 counts of murder, six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault. Nine children, four men and four women, were slain.
“We are facing an almost complete information blackout from the government which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client,” his civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said in a statement.
Maj. Chris Ophardt, a spokesman for 1st Corps, Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, said the investigation was ongoing.
“The prosecution will provide the defense with evidence in accordance with the Rules for Courts-Martial and the Military Rules of Evidence. Within these guidelines the prosecution is and has been communicating with the defense,” he said in an e-mail.
Browne, who is in Seattle, was speaking about members of the defense team in Afghanistan. He said they had tried to interview injured civilians being treated at Kandahar Hospital but were denied access and told to coordinate with prosecutors. He said that the following day, the prosecution team interviewed the wounded, with defense counsel only later learning that they had been released from hospital and there was no contact information for them.
“These witnesses are now who knows where … people just disappear into the countryside in Afghanistan,” he said later Friday at a press conference. “They (prosecutors) actually promised us that if we sent people to Afghanistan … that they would cooperate and make witnesses available for us, and they obviously violated that promise.”
Browne also said in the statement that his team was denied access to medical records of the wounded, making it “even more impossible” to locate them, and that the prosecution was “withholding the entire investigative file from the defense team.”
Afghan massacre: Sgt Bales case echoes loudly for ex-soldiers on hotline for vets
The Army doesn’t have any requirement to provide evidence to the defense at this point, according to military rules governing courts-martial. The next stage of the legal process is the Article 32 hearing, akin to a civilian grand jury, and which is “supposed to be a discovery tool for the defense,” Michael Navarre, an adviser at the National Institute of Military Justice and a former Navy prosecutor and defense counsel, told msnbc.com.
In general, most military prosecutors are cooperating with the defense and will provide some information -- though not everything -- prior to the Article 32 hearing to ensure it goes smoothly, he added, noting that some evidence may even be discovered after that proceeding.
“As a defense counsel, one of your jobs is to … build a public record as to what the government’s doing during the course of their investigation and also to some degree build sympathy for your client,” he said. “Given the seriousness and the gravity of the charges against his client, I would say it’s not uncommon to point out that the government isn’t being cooperative with your client in the investigation given the current public perception of his client.”
Browne said that though the defense team didn’t have the right to certain discovery materials until 30 days before the Article 32 hearing, he’d had better dealings in the past with prosecutors.
“We usually have the cooperation of prosecutors and they will give us information ahead of time just so we can be prepared and that’s just not happening in this case,” he said at the press conference. “My gut, from a defense lawyer’s standpoint, is when the prosecutors are not cooperating there’s a reason, and that reason usually is because they don’t really have much of case.”
“If they want cooperation from us, they better start cooperating more,” he later added.
How Staff Sgt. Bales' lawyers are fighting for his life
Bales, of Bellevue, Wash., is being held at a U.S. military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He was on his fourth tour in a war zone since signing up for the Army after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. He had been in Iraq on his previous tours, during which he suffered a foot injury and a traumatic brain injury in a vehicle rollover, media reports say.
Browne said Bales was “holding up,” communicating with his wife, being treated well. He said Bales had seen a chaplain.
Some military law experts interviewed by msnbc.com said they expect the defense to mount a legal pincer attack, in which Bales’ attorneys may try to win acquittal by attacking the evidence but have a fallback position aimed at winning a lesser sentence than the death penalty -- which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said could be sought in this case.
That fallback position could be diminished mental capacity, which they may attribute to his reported combat injuries and mental trauma.
For alleged Afghan shooter, death penalty unlikely
U.S. military officials told NBC News on Friday that the Army was preparing to conduct a psychological exam of Bales. The exam, known as the “706 Board,” is considered routine in such cases and will include a team of psychiatrists.
It's likely Bales would remain at Fort Leavenworth and the board doctors would travel to him, though a final decision has not been made.
NBC’s Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski and news producers Karen Lucht and Courtney Kube contributed to this report.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:
- Sanford mayor: Police resisted release of 911 tapes
- Lights on or off? Earth Hour faces new challenger
- Mom, 29, dies in agony in jail after being booted by ER
- 2 studies tie pesticide to bee population crashes
- Spike Lee apologizes, will pay Sanford couple over tweet
- Vt. teacher's killing may have been 'sexually motivated'
Leave a Comment:
Does anybody else think this whole story is just a tad too sensational to be true? Any of it? Anybody?
What ? Off of Zimmerman and back on to Bales ? Who will we blindly rush to judgement and lynch first ?
what is really funny in its own way about this whole thing is....the only FACT is the there are people dead and injured. So far, it seems to be nothing else about the incident has been proven or found to be factual....so...who's send the bs to us??? The Government or the media?
Either way...the whole thing stinks....too much BS, and too many differences and changes to stories. They should just drop the charges and let bales go if they can't PROVE for a FACT that he did it, had part of a group that commited the crime, ect..... cuz what i got outta the medias coverage so far are these FACTS :
1. Bales was in afghanistan, when the crime was commited
2. He's being charged alone for the crime
Now.......IDK what y'all think bout this whole situation......but I think this poor guy is either or possibly a combo of :
A : Being the scapegoat for a mission that botched.
B : Being nailed as the fall guy for a units actions.
C : Just in general getting bent over.
IF he did it, and they can PROVE it.....COODO's to them....But this whole thing is messed up in opinion.
Rich: In such a heated situation, extracting the truth out of a tragic event can prove daunting. I submit that you don't have a shred of proof for your "A,B, and C" conjectures ( which are not mutually exclusive ). I do imagine, though, that if evidence isn't scrupulously guarded, it can be corrupted beyond recognition. The investigation could be a sham or a whitewash, but what alternative do we have but to let it reveal what it may? I do agree with you that "...the whole thing stinks..." if by "the whole thing " you mean the situation our over-deployed vets face.
Too many of us have seen our government scapegoat someone before. The army has a track record of doing it. So automatic belief in something they say doesn't come easily and the more it looks like a coverup the less we believe them.
The defense strategy is that they are being obstructed? It would be easy for me to clammor unto the gravy train for personal reasons...but that has nothing to do with the case. Perhaps I have been obtuse by deflecting my personal experiences into many of my recent post, and for that, I apologize. Sure, I was in the military. I think I wouldn't be surprised to discover what was written about me versus what was actually accomplished is quite different. In that way, I can relate to the experiences felt by the defense team...but I am in no position to participate, and must excuse myself from further discussion.
The U.S. military can be a law unto itself unless forced to reveal information. How about Pat Tillman? It took three years and a Congressional investigation (after obvious Pentagon cover-up) for his parents to drag out the embarrassing truth - that Tillman had been shot by friendy fire.
Yeah, they have a specialty in covering up. They are good at it.
He was probably smoking hash and popping pills. He decided to go on a rampage. He remembers but it helps his defense if he pretends not to. A rotten apple will soon fall off the tree, one way or another. Karma dude.
I doubt he was set up. That possibility can easily be eliminated. Drill all of the guys and use lie detector tests or "truth serum". Military members cannot refuse any such treatment. They belong to the government. No need for consent.
Bales was not alone according to witnesses soooo he has an alibi so to speak the prosecution has a lot of explaining to do.
The rest of the world thinks Bales was not alone so they probably think he is being set up for this , so if we let him go they should understand why. Do you believe Bales or the witnesses ?
It has already gone beyond reasonable doubt. Would a jury dismiss the fact that witnesses claimed during a TV interview to have seen more than one perpertrator at the crime scene ? , I doubt it. There would still be some doubt left so it would be hard pressed. Support equal rights !
Obama has a cedibility issue to deal with it may cost him the election supporting this farce. They are looking for an excuse to spend more money on military so they can waste some more lives while they count their profits. A Greed driven society has only one direction. To The End ---->Truthers search for the truth !
Which issue will he "cede" to??
The matter is under investigation, the Article 32 Investigation hasn't even been scheduled. There's no obligation to be sharing much at this stage, as pointed out the Article 32 Investigation is a mechanism for discovery as well as determining if there is enough evidence to go forward with a General Court Martial, upon recommendation to the Convening Authority.
Sounds like a military cover up. How about the relatives and survivors who were interviewed by a foreign reporter, she said that the people said there were multiple shooters and described what they were wearing and that there was a helicopter flying overhead the whole time. These soldiers vowed retribution for their buddy's leg being blown off by a roadside bomb. I think this was to show these villagers if they blew up anymore roadside bombs this is what would happen to them. This is probably bigger than any of us know.