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.

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FORWARD OPERATING BASE MASUM GHAR, Afghanistan -- In a natural amphitheatre high among the jagged grey peaks of Afghanistan's Panjwai district, the shock of a village shooting rampage is still settling over U.S. soldiers who served with accused gunman Robert Bales.

The soldiers of Tacoma-based 3/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team were moving into areas inherited from Alaska-based troops, tracking their armored vehicles to memorize the mazy roads of southern province Kandahar, when more than a dozen people were shot dead in Belandai and Zangabad villages.

Bales' brothers in arms are perplexed and distraught by the March 11 slaughter, which has dragged U.S.-Afghan relations to new nadir, prompting President Hamid Karzai to demand a pullback of NATO forces from Afghan communities.

---

"We are all talking about Sergeant Bales. I talk with some of the soldiers who served with him and they are all surprised. It saddens the friends of his, because my understanding is it was totally out of character," 3/2 Brigade Chaplain Major Edward Choi told Reuters at the unit's headquarters at Forward Operating Base Masum Ghar.

Afghan massacre suspect's wife: 'He did not do this'

The U.S. military last week lodged 17 charges of premeditated murder against Bales, a four-tour veteran, ahead of what is expected to be a long trial. In theory at least, the death penalty is on the table.

Popular leader
Bales had been a popular leader, Choi said, making the massacre even more bewildering. Comrades reject reports his marriage had been in trouble ahead of an Afghan deployment he was reluctant to undertake.

"That is not the case," said Choi, shrugging in frustration. "People that knew him, that dealt with him personally, said he was a great NCO (non-commissioned officer), cared for soldiers, was tactically and operationally professional, loved his wife and kids."

Choi, whose small plywood chapel overlooks a wide river plain and brigade command fenced by concrete blast walls, said some of Bales' comrades had been stressed by moving into a dangerous area that birthed the Taliban, and where its one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammad Omar still has a home.

Three-hour firefight: Afghan militants attack NATO convoy

Choi said he had no doubt multiple deployments were taking a toll on some of the fighting men. New rules governing elite units like the one Bales was assigned to guard, and wandered from in darkness on the night of the killings, were likely.

"When I speak to some of my leaders, our concern is lack of oversight. There are conventional soldiers attached to special forces who are well trained, off on their own, very mature and growing beards and doing their own thing," he said.

"When you take a 19 or 20-year-old conventional soldier and put him into special operations, they might not be able to handle it."

Captain Janel Schlaudecker, a combat stress counsellor for U.S. soldiers in Panjwai, including Bales' unit, said while there was no explanation for what led to the massacres, she had not noticed an impact on the wider stress levels of Bales' brigade, even among the far-flung infantry units.

"It's so hard to judge how they would respond to this. But they are used to going out there and eating next to nothing, if anything," Schlaudecker said.

"They are used to being under a lot more pressure and not having a lot of sleep. They are wired completely differently. They are lot more resilient."

PTSD: Having the courage to ask for help

Tensions over the incident are still high in Panjwai, an insurgent hotbed west of Kandahar city, and the scene of some of the war's fiercest battles. Scores of Canadian soldiers were killed there before the Americans took over in mid-2011.

U.S. authorities have given the victims' families cash compensation of around $50,000 for each person killed, but at a meeting with district elders this week, U.S. officers and advisers were confronted by angry Afghans demanding to know why more was not done to prevent such an atrocity.

"Local people are very angry. I get hundreds of calls from people who want this soldier tried here, in Afghanistan," said Panjwai radio journalist Abdul Karim, who also runs a curio shop from a shipping container, used by U.S. troops.

Fighting season
Some soldiers worry the massacre will undo hard-won gains over the past year, when insurgent attacks fell 40 percent, and turn sentiment against incoming units of Bales' 3/2 Strykers ahead of the summer fighting months.

The 2012 fighting season is the last which will be fought by NATO in surge-level numbers, as the end-2014 deadline for the exit of most foreign combat troops approaches.

US orders more security for troops in Afghanistan

Insurgents have already carried out small attacks as a bitter winter recedes, but U.S. commanders say this does not mean an emboldened Taliban have brought hostilities forward.

"I think the coming summer will be bad and the new guys are worried," said Staff Sergeant Robert Nelson, 37, a garrulous ex-Marine from Texas who runs the 'Mission One' base shop at Masum Ghar for the outgoing 1/25 Arctic Wolves, now packing to leave.

Colonel Todd Wood, the outgoing U.S. commander for the 25th Infantry Division, said patrols were brushing lightly over Belandai and Zangabad to avoid provoking more anger, but he did not think the massacre would make the fighting months worse.

"Right now it's probably still too early to tell," said Wood, a weathered, hyperactive Iraq veteran from Iowa.

"We've still got villagers that will point out IEDs (improvised explosive devices), we've still got villagers out there that will warn us of a possible attack ... that hasn't changed," he said.

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Updated at 11 a.m. ET: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The United States paid close to $50,000 in compensation for each Afghan killed in the shooting spree attributed to a U.S. soldier in southern Afghanistan, a U.S. official told NBC News on Sunday.

The official, who asked not to be named, would not say exactly how much was paid to the families, but added the amount was close to the $50,000 reported by Afghan officials.

"The amount reflects the extraordinarily devastating nature of the incident," he said.

---

Average annual income in Afghanistan is $425, according to the BBC.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of sneaking out of his base before dawn on March 11 then creeping into the houses of two nearby villages and opening fire on sleeping families within. The U.S. military has charged Bales with 17 murders.

Bales charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghanistan massacre

The 38-year-old soldier is accused of using his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher, to kill four men, four women, two boys and seven girls, then burning some of the bodies.

The Associated Press earlier reported that the families of the dead received $50,000 for each person killed on Saturday at the governor's office, citing Kandahar provincial council member Agha Lalai.

Agha Lalai told the AP that each wounded person has received $11,000 and that they were told the money was from U.S. President Barack Obama. Community elder Jan Agha has confirmed the same figures.

US officials: Soldier split Afghan massacre in two

The American official who handed over the money said it was not compensation, but the U.S. government offering to help the victims and their families, Kandahar provincial council member Haji Nyamat Khan said.

But a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, Col. Gary Kolb, said the money was compensation.

NBC's Atia Abawi, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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“We don’t have a particularly bloodthirsty military justice program,” said Eugene Fidell, the co-founder of the National Institute of Military Justice who teaches at Yale Law School.

---

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghanistan massacre

There are currently six men on death row in the military’s only maximum security prison -- euphemistically called the “Disciplinary Barracks” -- here on Fort Leavenworth. But the last execution was carried out in 1961, when an Army ammunition handler was hanged there for raping an 11-year-old girl in Austria.

It’s been so long, in fact, that the military prison no longer has the equipment needed to execute a prisoner. Instead, the sentence would be carried out at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed. The current method is lethal injection; the Leavenworth military prison had an electric chair when that was the method, but it was never used.

None of those currently on death row were convicted of crimes on the battlefield against foreign civilians; all were convicted of murders of U.S. civilians or fellow military personnel.

Death toll in Afghanistan massacre climbs to 17

The next step in the process is what’s called an Article 32 investigation, which will determine if the case should go to trial (which would be a court martial), and if so, what specific charges should be brought (they can be different from the charges originally filed), and if they should carry the possibility of the death penalty.

Analysts say that process will not be quick.

“I would expect that in a complicated case like this, it would be several months before we would see an Article 32 investigation,” said Victor Hansen, a retired Army lawyer who now teaches at New England Law in Boston. “There’s a lot of investigation the government has yet to do.”

If this becomes a death penalty case, there would have to be 12 jury members, and their guilty verdict would have to be unanimous for it to result in an execution. In other cases, as few as five jurors are required and a two-thirds vote can convict.

“If you have a capital case, we don’t cut corners,” said the Yale Law School’s Fidell.

PTSD: Having the courage to ask for help

And because Bales is an enlisted man, he could request that enlisted personnel make up at least a third of the 12 considering his fate.

Even though Bales is being held at Fort Leavenworth, proceedings may not necessarily be held here. A leading contender for the trial venue is Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Seattle, where Bales is based and near where his wife and two small children live.

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Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged Friday with 17 counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder, along with other charges, in connection with a shooting rampage in two southern Afghanistan villages that shocked Americans back home and further roiled U.S.-Afghan relations.

The charges come almost two weeks after the massacre in which Bales allegedly left his base in the early morning hours and shot Afghan civilians, including women and nine children, while they slept in their beds, then burned some of the bodies.

Military wives rally around Karilyn Bales

It was the worst allegation of civilian killings by an American and has severely strained U.S.-Afghan ties at a critical time in the decade-old war.

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 Bales was read the charges on Friday at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he has been held since being flown from Afghanistan last week, a U.S. official said.

For alleged Afghan shooter, death penalty unlikely

Bales' civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said Friday without commenting on the specific charges that he believes the government will have a hard time proving its case and that at some stage in the prosecution his client's mental state will be an important issue.

Death toll in Afghanistan massacre climbs to 17

Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, says Bales was also charged Friday with six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault.

The decision to charge him with premeditated murder suggests that prosecutors plan to argue that he consciously conceived the killings. A military legal official for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case, noted that premeditated murder is not something that has to have been contemplated for a long time.

 

“These are unsurprising charges, predictable charges. I would have thought there would have been a few more lesser charges because no prosecutor likes to lose his principal charge and see the individual walk so usually some lesser offenses are charged as well,” Gary Solis, former head of the Marine Corps’ Military Law Branch and current adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, told msnbc.com.

“But what will really be significant is when the charges are referred to trial by the convening authority … because when they are referred, they will either be referred as capital or not. … If referred capital, that will change the complexion of the case.”

A senior U.S. official tells NBC News that Bales is likely to face lesser charges such as dereliction of duty and disobeying a lawful order.

The 38-year-old soldier and father of two, whose home is in Bonney Lake, Wash., faces trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but it could be months before any public hearing.

Legal jurisdiction in the Bales case is expected to be switched Friday from U.S. Forces-Afghanistan in Kabul to Bales' home base of Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., U.S. officials said.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said Bales could face the death penalty if he is convicted of murder, but it is unlikely. The U.S. military has not executed a service member since 1961. Legal experts say Bales could face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.

The maximum punishment for a premeditated murder conviction is death, dishonorable discharge from the armed forces, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade and total forfeiture of pay and allowances, Kolb said. The mandatory minimum sentence is life imprisonment with the chance of parole.

How Staff Sgt. Bales' lawyers are fighting for his life

Legal experts have said the death penalty would be unlikely in the case. The military hasn't executed a service member since 1961 when an Army ammunition handler was hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl in Austria. None of the six men currently on death row at Fort Leavenworth was convicted for atrocities against foreign civilians.

“This is just the first step in what’s going to be a very long process and it still remains to be seen whether this is actually going to be a death penalty case or not,” Daniel Conway, a lawyer and former Marine staff sergeant who has been involved in battlefield investigations in Iraq and Afghanistan of alleged crimes by U.S. soldiers, told msnbc.com. “The basic idea here is that you can’t hold somebody in jail forever without charging them, so they’ve had to take this first step here.”

The charging document did not provide details about the killings, leaving the timeline unclear. The dead bodies were found in Balandi and Alkozai villages — one north and one south of the base.

Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. saw a U.S. soldier return to the base around 1:30 a.m. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4 a.m. said he saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m. It's unknown whether the Afghan guards saw the same U.S. soldier. If the gunman acted alone, information from the Afghan guards would suggest that he returned to base in between the shooting sprees.

It also is not known whether the suspect used grenades, Kolb said. The grenade launcher attachment is added to the standard issue M-4 rifle for some soldiers but not all, he said. Bales was assigned to provide force protection at the base.

Msnbc.com's Miranda Leitsinger and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Lawyers for Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians, will likely mount a two-pronged defense, military law experts say, attacking the evidence against him while also arguing that his reported combat injuries and mental trauma created diminished mental capacity.

Bales’ civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, has suggested such an approach in his public comments on the case, in which the Army has identified the soldier as the lone suspect in the March 11 attack but not yet charged him.

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“There’s no forensic evidence, there’s no medical examiner’s evidence, there’s no evidence about how many alleged victims or where those remains are,” he told NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, adding that he intends to travel to Afghanistan to oversee his own investigation.

But he also stated that his client had “no memory” of the attack and suggested that could be from a concussive head injury. In comments to CBS News on Monday, he indicated he would make a "diminished capacity" argument rather than pursue an insanity defense.

Defense official: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales to face 16 counts in Afghanistan massacre

Some military law experts interviewed by msnbc.com said they expect a legal pincer attack, in which the defense 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.

Military officials have said that after drinking at an Army outpost in southern Afghanistan on March 11, Bales, 38, crept away in the night to two nearby villages, where he shot his victims and set many of them on fire. At least nine of the 16 victims were children, they said.

Gary Solis, former head of the Marine Corps’ Military Law Branch and current adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, said the fact that the crime occurred in a combat zone in a distant country complicates the task for prosecutors, who are expected to charge Bales with premeditated murder and other crimes.

Army Sgt. Robert Bales' lawyer questions evidence in Afghanistan killings

To convict Bales of that charge, prosecutors would have to prove that people died, the means by which they died, that the accused is the person who used those means and had premeditated the offense, Solis said.

That would be no easy feat, given the possibility of numerous crime scene complications, he said.

“The prosecution is under additional burden in that they’re trying a crime that happened … 9,000 miles away,” he said. “They have no bodies, they have no autopsies, they have no forensics, they have no photographs, they have no witnesses. There is no Afghan who is going to come here to testify against this guy, so how do they prove premeditation? It’s going to be a problem for them.”

Daniel Conway, a lawyer and former Marine staff sergeant who has been involved in battlefield investigations in Iraq and Afghanistan of alleged crimes by U.S. soldiers, said prosecuting Bales will be “exceptionally difficult.” Even establishing him as the gunman could be problematic, he said.

“It still remains to be seen whether any of these Afghan local nationals can actually identify Bales as the shooter,” he said. “Now there’s going to be some real linguistic divides here in terms of people’s … ability to communicate what they saw but you may very well have the potential down the road for a defense that he didn’t do it.”

The physical evidence from combat zone crimes is similarly suspect, Conway said.

“In these combat zone cases, you have crime scenes that are contaminated almost instantly … bodies are moved, forensic evidence is either contaminated or cleaned, there (are) typically no photographs that are taken of forensic value so you can’t necessarily go back and do a very thorough wound analysis,” he said, noting that it would be difficult to exhume the bodies if they have already been buried due to Islamic tradition.

“It’s not easy to separate the fact from the fiction in this kind of case,” he added.

If Bales’ case goes to trial, the defense will have an opportunity to react to the government’s case, because the Army presents first. That will enable his lawyers to decide whether to focus on attacking the evidence or arguing that Bales’ reported combat injuries and mental trauma from the battlefield created diminished mental capacity. Or, they may do both, Solis said.

“The government has to go first and it has to prove its case,” he said. “He’s going to be ready to take advantage of any chink in the government’s arguments that he perceives in addition to whatever argument he may have.”

Bales 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 spent three years in Iraq on his previous tours, during which time he lost part of a foot and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to a vehicle rollover, media reports say. Two days before he allegedly attacked the Afghan villagers, he saw the aftermath of a bombing in which a fellow soldier had his leg blown off, The Associated Press reported.

While an insanity defense remains possible, experts who spoke to msnbc.com note that winning such a case is extremely difficult in a military trial.

Unlike an insanity defense, where Bales would have to be shown not to have known right from wrong to be acquitted, diminished capacity is simply an argument that the crime was not premeditated and that mitigating factors should lessen his punishment.

“That’s very hard, so … he might have to go with this diminished capacity,” Greg Rinckey, a former attorney with the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps who is now managing partner of military law firm Tully Rinckey PLLC, said of an insanity defense. “Most of the cases that I’ve tried, that’s what we’ve went with is because we couldn’t get to … the complete no mental responsibility or the capability to stand trial.”

Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, said testimony indicating that Bales’ was afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, could be introduced at this juncture, but would be unlikely to result in acquittal.

“Maybe some psychiatrist will say he suffers from PTSD,” he said. “That’s not a defense – probably. There’s no case in which PTSD has given rise to a successful insanity defense in the military.”

Solis said Bales’ lawyers would likely put the brain injury, the wounding of his comrade, the multiple deployments and his foot injury into the “diminished capacity argument box,” with the traumatic brain injury (TBI) possibly being a strong element in support of that claim.

Afghan massacre by US soldier puts focus back on brain testing

“You can get a doctor who will come in there with a chart and … show here’s a normal brain and here’s his brain getting TBI,” he said. “So the jury’s got something concrete … that they can wrap their not guilty finding around,” if that’s how they’re leaning.

Conway said doctors compare traumatic brain injury to a “hardware” problem, whereas PTSD is more like a “software” issue.

Solis, the former head of the Marines law branch, said the horrific nature of the crime could ironically benefit Bales’ defense.

“They’re going to say, ‘Would somebody in control of their facilities, somebody who didn’t have diminished capacity have done something this wacky?’” he said. “The act itself is inherently supportive of a diminished capacity” argument.

As a result, he said, Bales’ case might not even make it to a military courtroom. Perhaps a deal will be struck, or maybe mental health exams -– which could takes months -- will show that Bales is not competent to stand trial.

But Conway, the former Marine who has been involved in high-profile military crime cases, including the 2005 killing by U.S. Marines of 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women and children in Haditha, Iraq, said the defense also runs a risk by telegraphing that it intends to argue diminished capacity.

“It’s a two-edged sword. On the one hand, if they can prevent this from turning into a capital (death penalty) case, that’s a huge victory,” he said. “On the other hand, they’re giving away the playbook and they don’t have any access to the witnesses. So the government is going to be out talking to everybody trying to rebut the diminished capacity defense.”

At the same time, a defense built on PTSD and brain injury is generally a tough sell in a military courtroom, Conway said.

“We have used it many times” to get charges reduced, he said. “I can tell you that it’s hard to get a military jury to be sympathetic to these kinds of defenses because the way they look at it is, ‘I’ve had multiple deployments, I’ve had multiple concussive events … I’ve got family problems, and I didn’t go out and do this.’”

“So you’re going to have to be able to explain to the jury why this case is different from their own experiences in combat and that’s going to be tough to do.”  

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FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. – Wake up, 5 a.m.; breakfast, 5:15 a.m.; clean-up chores, 6:50 a.m. until 11:20 a.m., and so on until lights out at 10:05 p.m.

That’s Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ daily routine in a medium/minimum security pre-trial detention facility in a remote corner of this sprawling 5,600-acre Army post. Bales is the American soldier accused of massacring 16 civilians in southern Afghanistan. His lawyer, John Henry Browne, says the 17-month-old facility is cleaner than many civilian prisons he’s seen.

For Bales, it’s a relatively lonely existence. He’s in a special cell by himself – solitary confinement – not the usual four-prisoner bays. He’s made use of the recreation facilities, according to prison officials, and has met with the prison chaplain, according to Browne.

---

Like all new inmates, he’s in a black-out period of about a week while he’s processed and classified – no access to phones or e-mail. Later he will have access to email, that will be monitored by authorities, but not Internet access, according to his lawyer. And he will be able to keep books, newspapers and magazines.

Browne says Army officials are working to make an exception for Bales so he may speak with his wife, Karilyn, by phone; their only contact since he was arrested March 12 was a 30-minute phone conversation when he was held in Kuwait. They are also arranging for Karilyn Bales to travel from Seattle to see her husband for the first time since he left for Afghanistan in December.

The 464-bed facility also houses military convicts sentenced to up to five years of imprisonment. But the two populations are kept apart, according to Browne, Bales’ interactions are currently limited to guards and the chaplain. 

Interestingly, the facility holds a few other noteworthy pre-trail detainees – including PFC Bradley Manning, accused of giving classified documents to Wikileaks. 

Browne, who’s previous clients include serial killer Ted Bundy, said his 11 hours with Bales were some of the most emotional he’s ever spent, as his client described his three deployments to Iraq and the three months in Afghanistan leading up to the shooting rampage.

“He's dragged pieces of bodies all over the place and had people shot out from right next to him,” Browne told NBC News. “Things that are hard to imagine.... If you saw the movie ‘The Hurt Locker,’ well, that's like a Disney movie compared to what he's gone through,” he said, referring to the Academy Award-winning film about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq.

It was Browne and Bales’ first face-to-face meeting; all previous conversations were by phone. Bales’ first questions to him, according to Browne?  “‘How are the boys on the ground? How are my buddies? I'm really worried about them. I'm really worried that this allegation will make their lives more difficult.’” And all of the rest of the questions were about his family. Not once did he ask about his own plight, according to Browne.

“If I was in a life threatening situation, I would want him next to me,” Browne said. 

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The American soldier who is accused in a massacre of 16 villagers near Kandahar could face the death penalty, a military defense attorney said Monday, in one of the worst cases of alleged mass murder by a U.S. service member since the Vietnam War.

U.S. officials have said the soldier acted alone, leaving his base in southern Afghanistan and opening fire on sleeping families. After the massacre, he went back to his base and turned himself in, officials said.

The military will not identify the soldier until charges are filed, Pentagon spokesman William Speaks told msnbc.com Monday. The suspect remains in Afghanistan while the attack is being investigated.

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According to military officials, the soldier will be tried within the military justice system, not turned over to Afghan authorities for trial, rebuffing a call from Afghan lawmakers to use their courts.

 

Report: US soldier who massacred 16 Afghans was from Stryker brigade

The suspect is based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He has been identified as a staff sergeant in the Stryker brigade who was taking part in a village stability operation in Afghanistan. He is a 38-year-old married father of two on his first deployment to Afghanistan after three previous deployments in Iraq.

"Based on what we’re hearing I suspect this will be prosecuted as a death penalty case," Philip Cave, a Washington-based military defense attorney told msnbc.com. "You’ve got felony murder, and certainly the number of victims and the circumstances -– very young children as victims –- I think there will be sufficient grounds to move forward as a death penalty case."

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the death penalty is a consideration as the military moves to investigate and possibly put the soldier suspected in the mass killings on trial.

Before charges are filed, the soldier will likely undergo heavy psychological testing as part of the investigation, Cave said. Then an Article 32 investigation -- a thorough examination of the case with testimony from witnesses -- will be conducted before any court-martial proceedings. If there is a conviction at court-martial with the death penalty imposed and all appeals exhausted, the president of the United States himself would have to sign the death warrant for the soldier's execution. 

Retired Army platoon Sgt. Jonn Lilyea, a Desert Storm veteran who writes the blog "This Ain’t Hell," told msnbc.com he expects the military to make an example out of the shooter as the case moves through the justice system.

Mourning, anger sweep Afghanistan after massacre

Still, Lilyea cautioned that people should not rush to blame the killings on the soldier’s deployments during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I’d wait to see if he really was in a position that would have affected him in this way," Lilyea said. "But I’m more concerned people will try to use this like they did after Vietnam with the My Lai massacre and taint all combat veterans of this generation as if they were like this one guy." Millions of Americans have served in combat, seen and done "terrible things," but have gone on to normal productive lives after their service, Lilyea pointed out.

Lt. William Calley was convicted of killing 22 villagers in My Lai village in 1968 in an incident that heightened U.S. opposition to the Vietnam War.

If the number of people slain in the attack is confirmed at 16, and the soldier is convicted, the mass killings would be the most of any convicted killer on the military’s death row, which currently has six inmates.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. He also faces a possible death penalty. His trial was scheduled to begin this month but was delayed until June to allow his defense more time to prepare.

John Bennett was the last U.S. soldier to be executed by the military. He was hanged in 1961 after being convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old Austrian girl.

Lethal injection is the current method of execution under military justice, according to military defense lawyer Cave.

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Updated at 6:45 p.m. ET:  Prosecutors asked judge Lt. Col. David Jones to give Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich the maximum sentence of three months confinement, a reduction in rank and forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay.

They said his knee-jerk reaction of sending the squad to assault nearby homes without positively identifying the threat went against his training and led to the deaths of the 10 women and children.

"That is a horrific result from that derelict order of shooting first, ask questions later," Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan told the court.

The judge said he would recommend that Wuterich's rank be reduced to private.

He said he decided not to dock his pay because he is the divorced father of three young daughters with sole custody.

Updated at 6:20 p.m. ET:  A Marine sergeant who led a squad that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis will spend no time in confinement.

Military judge Lt. Col. David Jones said he wanted to send Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich to the brig, but his hands were tied by a plea agreement that prevents any jail time.

Jones was not aware of the stipulation until he opened the plea agreement in court after recommending 90 days confinement.

Wuterich pleaded guilty to negligent dereliction of duty, a charge that carried a maximum sentence of 90 days. But because of the way the military system works, the terms of the deal with prosecutors weren't known to the judge until after he made his sentencing recommendation in court on Tuesday.

Earlier:
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- A Marine sergeant whose squad killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in assaults after a bomb killed a fellow Marine has told a judge he never fired his weapon at any women or children that day.

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich addressed a Camp Pendleton, Calif., court during sentencing for negligent dereliction of duty in the 2005 attacks in Haditha, Iraq.

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A plea deal Monday ended a manslaughter case against the Marine from Meriden, Conn. Prosecutors implicated Wuterich in 19 of the 24 deaths.

Wuterich's statement also addressed surviving members of families who were attacked, saying he knows nothing can ease their pain and that they are the real victims.

Wuterich said that when he told his squad to shoot first and ask questions later, he did not intend they shoot civilians, but to not hesitate in the face of the enemy.

"The truth is: I never fired any weapon at any women or children that day," Wuterich said in a statement during his sentencing hearing.

'Sorrow' for loss of loved ones
He began by telling the family members of victims, "Words cannot express my sorrow for the loss of your loved one. I know there is nothing I can say to ease your pain. I wish to assure you that on that day, it was never my intention (to) harm you or your families. I know that you are the real victims of Nov. 19, 2005."

He went on to say he went to Iraq to do his duty, serve his country, and do the best job he could.

Iraq War veterans to attend State of the Union address

"When my Marines and I cleared those houses that day, I responded to what I perceived as a threat and my intention was to eliminate that threat in order to keep the rest of my Marines alive," he said. "So when I told my team to shoot first and ask questions later, the intent wasn't that they would shoot civilians, it was that they would not hesitate in the face of the enemy."

Military prosecutors worked for more than six years to bring Wuterich to trial on manslaughter charges that could have sent him away to prison for life.

But only weeks after the long-awaited trial started, they offered Wuterich a deal that stopped the proceedings for the squad leader who ordered his men to "shoot first, ask questions later" and resulted in one of the Iraq War's worst attacks on civilians by U.S. troops.

The 31-year-old Marine, who was originally accused of unpremeditated murder, pleaded guilty Monday to negligent dereliction of duty for leading the squad that killed the civilians.

Wuterich, who was indicted in 19 of the 24 deaths, now faces no more than three months in confinement.

It was a stunning outcome for the last defendant in the case once compared with the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The seven other Marines initially charged were exonerated or had their cases dropped.

'Insult to all Iraqis'
"This sentence gives us the proof, the solid proof that the Americans don't respect human rights," Ali Badr, a Haditha resident and relative of one of those killed, told Reuters. "This is an insult to the victims and an insult to all Iraqis."

One of the survivors, Awis Fahmi Hussein, told The Associated Press in Haditha: "I was expecting that the American judiciary would sentence this person to life in prison and that he would appear and confess in front of the whole world that he committed this crime, so that America could show itself as democratic and fair."

Military judge Lt. Col. David Jones began hearing arguments from both sides Tuesday at Camp Pendleton, Calif., before making a sentencing recommendation to be considered by the commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command.

Legal experts said the case was fraught with errors made by investigators and the prosecution that let it drag on for years. The prosecution was also hampered by squad mates who acknowledged they had lied to investigators initially and later testified in exchange for having their cases dropped, bringing into question their credibility.

In addition, Wuterich was seen as taking the fall for senior leaders and more seasoned combat veterans, analysts said. It was his first time in combat when he led the squad on Nov. 19, 2005.

Brian Rooney, an attorney for another former defendant, said cases like Haditha are difficult to prosecute because a military jury is unlikely to question decisions made in combat unless wrongdoing is clear-cut and egregious, like rape.

"If it's a gray area, fog-of-war, you can't put yourself in a Marine's situation where he's legitimately trying to do the best he can," said Rooney, who represented Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the highest-ranking Marine charged in the case. "When you're in a town like Haditha or Fallujah, you've got bad guys trying to kill you and trying to do it in very surreptitious ways."

The Haditha attack is considered among the war's defining moments, further tainting America's reputation when it was already at a low point after the release of photos of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison.

Anger lingers in Iraq
It still fuels anger in Iraq today.

"We wonder about such a sentence issued against the defendant. We called upon U.S. to be fair in passing sentences. Regrettably, we are disappointed about the issuance of such sentences," said Khalid Salman Rasif, a member of the Provincial Council in Haditha, adding he would contact the lawyer for victims' families for an explanation.

Kamil al-Dulaimi, a Sunni lawmaker from the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, called the plea agreement proof that "Americans still deal with Iraqis without any respect."

"It's just another barbaric act of Americans against Iraqis," al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. "They spill the blood of Iraqis and get this worthless sentence for the savage crime against innocent civilians."

Wuterich, the father of three children, had faced the possibility of life behind bars when he was charged with nine counts of manslaughter, which will be dropped. Along with facing a maximum of three months in confinement, he could also lose two-thirds of his pay and see his rank demoted to private when he's sentenced.

Khalid Salman, a lawyer for the Haditha victims' relatives, told Reuters he could not believe the sentence and had to check that it was true.

"This is not a traffic felony," said Salman, who had a cousin killed in the massacre.

Wuterich, his family and his attorneys declined to comment Monday after he entered the plea. Prosecutors also declined to comment on the plea deal.

During the trial before a jury of combat Marines who served in Iraq, prosecutors argued he lost control after seeing the body of his friend blown apart by the bomb and led his men on a rampage in which they stormed two nearby homes, blasting their way in with gunfire and grenades. Among the dead was a man in a wheelchair.

In the deal, Wuterich acknowledged that his orders misled his men to believe they could shoot without hesitation and not follow the rules of engagement that required troops to positively identify their targets before they raided the homes.

He told the judge that caused "tragic events."

"I think we all understood what we were doing so I probably just should have said nothing," Wuterich told the judge.

He said his orders were based on the guidance of his platoon commander at the time, and that the squad did not take any gunfire during the 45-minute raid.

Many of his squad mates testified that they do not believe to this day that they did anything wrong because they feared insurgents were inside hiding.

Haditha prompted commanders to demand troops be more careful in distinguishing between civilians and combatants.

Former Navy officer David Glazier said the case shows such rules are essential to helping the United States prevail in an armed conflict.

"The reality is that this incident has had significant consequences for the U.S. in Iraq," said Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "It probably fueled the resistance and so it probably ended up costing additional soldiers and Marines their lives later on."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.