Spc. Ryan Hallock / DVIDS via EPA file

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, seen here at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, Calif., Aug. 23, 2011, is accused of murdering 16 Afghan villagers.

The case of a decorated U.S. Army sergeant accused of murdering 16 civilians in two Afghanistan villages will proceed to a court-martial and he could face the death penalty if convicted, the Army said Wednesday.

The military’s General Court-Martial Convening Authority this week referred charges against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales to a general court-martial. The decision came after a review of evidence from a pretrial hearing last month.

No date has been set for the court-martial, which will be held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Tacoma, Wash.

Bales, 39, faces charges of premeditated murder and other crimes in the predawn shooting and stabbing attack on two villages in southern Afghanistan early on March 11. Prosecutors say he left his remote base, attacked one village, returned to the base, and then slipped away again to attack another nearby compound.

Sixteen people were killed, nine of them children, and six other civilians wounded.

Army prosecutors have suggested Bales went on the rampage in revenge for a bomb attack on his unit in which a fellow soldier lost a leg.

At the time, Bales, an 11-year Army veteran, was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team and was serving his fourth combat tour.  He is currently being held at the Northwest Joint Regional Confinement Facility at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

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For the death penalty to be imposed, the court-martial members must unanimously find:  the service member is guilty of the eligible crime; at least one aggravating factor exists; and that the aggravating factor must substantially outweigh any extenuating or mitigating circumstances.  

The charges are merely accusations and the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

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Updated at 1 p.m. ET — A military hearing for Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of carrying out a pre-dawn slaughter of Afghan villagers, was set to hear the accounts of family members and victims in Afghanistan via live video call Friday.

The testimony comes one day after a forensic expert testified that she had matched blood from Bales' clothing to DNA removed from the scene of the killings.

The Article 32 hearings, similar to pre-trial hearings in a civilian court, were to determine whether there was sufficient evidence from the March 11 killings of 16 people in two villages — most of them women and children — to proceed with a court martial of Bales.

Bales, a 39-year-old decorated veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder, as well as charges of assault and wrongfully possessing and using steroids and alcohol while deployed.

The shootings in Afghanistan's Kandahar province marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on an individual U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and damaged already strained U.S.-Afghan relations.

Military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Bales has not entered a plea and was not expected to testify. His attorneys, who did not give an opening statement, have not discussed the evidence, but say Bales has post-traumatic stress disorder and suffered a concussive head injury during a prior deployment to Iraq.

Two victims and four relatives of victims are scheduled to testify from Afghanistan against the American soldier on Friday night, starting at 7:30 p.m. PT (10:30 p.m. ET). 

Also slated to appear are two Afghan National Army guards present at Camp Belambay at the time of the events. Their testimony may shed light on conflicting accounts already presented in court.

One U.S. soldier testified on Tuesday that he was told by one of the Afghan guards that two U.S. soldiers were seen entering the compound in the early hours of March 11, and one was seen leaving again, apparently contradicting government prosecutors' version of events.

The government — in a theory supported by several witnesses on Monday — contends that Bales left and entered the compound twice on his own, and acted alone.

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com 

Some Afghan villagers said after the shootings that more than one U.S. soldier was directly involved. Friday's hearing could be the first time such testimony is made public under oath, potentially casting doubt on the U.S. government's theory that Bales was solely responsible for the killings.

On Thursday, the court heard from an Army forensics specialist who testified that she had discovered traces of blood from nine individuals — four females and five males — on Bales' clothing, but only one of the DNA samples matched blood found at the crime scene. 

Christine Trapolsi, a DNA examiner with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation laboratory, said there was blood on Bales' camouflage clothing, underwear, socks and shoes.

"I tried to take what I thought was a representative item," she said, describing how she cut blood-stained swatches of clothing taken from Bales after he returned to his Camp Belambay base.

Her testimony was the first to physically link Bales to the crime scene with forensic evidence. She said she compared the samples to blood swabs taken from three compounds in the villages of Alkozai and Najiban where prosecutors say Bales killed his victims and attempted to burn some of the bodies.

SEALs punished for role in developing 'Medal of Honor' video game, official says

But the DNA of only one of the nine unidentified people whose blood was found on Bales' clothing matched samples taken from one of the Afghan homes, Trapolsi said.

A second expert said materials taken from a pillow in an Afghan house where Bales allegedly carried out the assault matched fibers on the "cape" he wore that night, the News Tribune reported.

Soldiers who took Bales into custody on the early hours of March 11 reported that he was wearing a t-shirt, combat pants, a helmet, night vision goggles and a makeshift cape that appeared to be a decorative window or door covering.

After the killings, investigators could not get to the crime scenes in the two villages near the camp for three weeks because of the risk of attack by enraged Afghans. This complicated evidence-gathering.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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LOS ANGELES – The young men who answer the phones at the National Veterans Foundation's hotline for troubled veterans speak with an authority that comes from having faced down the same demons that plague their callers.

All are combat veterans, having served up to four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all have struggled with either PTSD or traumatic brain injury – the signature wounds of these conflicts – or both.

For them, the story of Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of murdering 17 Afghan civilians during his fourth combat deployment, triggers mixed emotions – horror over the senseless rampage but also empathy for a soldier who, in their view, apparently was pushed beyond the breaking point. But their more immediate concern is the impact it may have on the troubled voices on the other end of the phone lines they answer each day.

"One of the biggest issues we have … is the vets don’t get the jobs," said Apolonio Munoz III, 28, an Army veteran deployed during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 who works for the hotline while pursuing a social work degree. "[Employers] think they are whack-jobs and they’re all going to be cold-blooded killers, they’re going to come in and shoot up the place, which is not the situation."

Munoz and several other former soldiers who answer the hotline agreed to share with msnbc.com their thoughts on PTSD, the stresses of war and the news that Bales – a 38-year-old soldier with a clean military record – allegedly crept into an Afghan village at night on March 11 and slaughtered Afghan civilians, including women and children.

"It’s an absolute tragedy, and it never should have happened," Cameron White, 31, who served two tours of duty in Iraq with the Marines before leaving the military and becoming a college student and anti-war activist, said of the massacre in Kandahar province. He said he believes the killing were "a byproduct of a failed policy that continues to put traumatized troops out on the battlefield when they shouldn’t be there."

Their comments will likely presage parts of Bales' trial, in which the cumulative effects of combat deployments and the degree to which PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury) can be linked to violence will almost certainly play a role.

Follow Kari Huus on Twitter and Facebook.

Bales, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder along with other charges, suffered a brain injury in Iraq but was not diagnosed as suffering from PTSD. His defense is expected to argue, however, that he suffered "diminished capacity" as a result of the injury and possibly undiagnosed PTSD. Bales, who is being held in detention at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has not yet entered a plea to the charges, but his civilian defense attorney, John Henry Browne, has indicated he expects to mount a vigorous defense based in part on his client’s mental state.

How staff Sgt. Bales lawyers are fighting for his life

Many experts also expect the defense to produce expert witnesses to testify about the effects on mental health of repeat combat deployments. But just as with PTSD and TBI, the record is incomplete, as the Iraq and Afghan conflicts mark the first time the U.S. has cycled soldiers in and out of combat so many times.

The latter issue resonates loudly with the former soldiers who answer the hot line.

'Yes, I killed Iraqis'
White said that his experiences in Iraq led him to believe that not even the most hardened soldier is immune to meltdown amid the repeated stresses of combat.

James Cheng / msnbc.com

Left to right, Rich Rudnick, Wendell Guillermo and Apolonio E. Muñoz III work at the National Veterans Foundation in Los Angeles.

"I think when you say … 'that’s not me' or ‘that would never happen to me,' I think anybody that says that is just lying to themselves," he said. "… Something like that could happen to any one of us."

Another hot line operator, Freddy Cordova, 29, who served four tours in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, said the mental health evaluations he received between deployments were cursory at best.

In an evaluation after his first deployment, Cordova said he answered 'yes' to most of the combat-related questions: "Yes, I saw dead people. Yes, I saw dead Americans. Yes, I fired my weapon. Yes, I killed Iraqis. Yes, I killed the enemy." 

"I didn’t report that I was a threat to others, but I put that I would like to speak to somebody," he said. "What did the Army turn around to do? They just overlook it. Four months later, I’m in Iraq again."

Floyd "Shad" Meshad, founder and president of the National Veterans Foundation and a psychiatric social worker with 40 years' experience working with combat veterans, said he has repeatedly seen the effects to overexposure to the horrors of war.

"We know that soldiers, when they have seen too much combat, they will either implode – in suicide – or explode," he said. "The military just continues to send people back into combat like they were rifles, just kind of cleans them up and sends them back in. … I don’t want to say that everybody flips out like this, but a significant number do."

James Cheng / msnbc.com

Floyd 'Shad' Meshad, founder and president of the nonprofit National Veterans Foundation.

Meshad started his career as an Army mental health officer in Vietnam and was instrumental in developing a national network of community-based Veteran Centers, offering counseling, referrals and readjustment assistance, beginning in the 1970s. He has served as an expert witness in about a dozen trials for veterans facing the death penalty, he said, and appeared in court for hundreds of others facing lesser charges.

When Bales was identified as the suspect in the Afghan killings, Meshad rushed the soldier's defense team an advance copy of a new book published by NVF, "Attorney's Guide to Defending Veterans in Criminal Court."

But he said he fears that politics -- including the need to appease the Afghan government -- may outweigh the role of mental health factors in the court's ruling on the Afghanistan slayings.

"They are going to cook Bales," he predicted.

But even the mention of PTSD and Bales in the same sentence worries Matthew Friedman, executive director of the National Center for PTSD under the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

"It will be a terrible thing if people with PTSD were painted with a Sgt. Bales paintbrush. It’s just not appropriate," said Friedman, who has been involved in research and treatment of PTSD for 35 years and is also a professor of psychiatry, toxicology and pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School. "There is evidence that some people with PTSD may exhibit irritable or aggressive behavior at times. There’s no evidence that this kind of indiscriminate violence is a symptom of PTSD."

And he said that Bales’ history before joining the military – which included financial fraud and an assault case in Washington state – signaled that he was a troubled individual.

Referrals and suicide intervention
The veterans working the NVF hot line have what most experts consider textbook cases of PTSD. They have struggled with anxiety, anger and hyper-vigilance brought home from the combat zone. For some, visiting a shopping mall is a daunting experience, as they find themselves constantly scanning for potential threats. Even as these men recover and pursue civilian jobs and studies, some yell in their sleep, dream about explosions or are startled by loud noises or a glimpse of trash along the road that looks like an IED.

Most of the time, experts say, the damage from repeated exposure to combat plays out in insidious ways. It contributes to divorce and substance abuse, and takes a toll on the mental health of children. According to the Center for New American Security, 18 vets commit suicide every day.

The NVF hotline has been fielding between 11,000 and 12,000 calls a year over the last several years. Four or five a month come from veterans, or even soldiers still in service, who are dangerously depressed and threatening suicide, Meshad said.

Most others are from frustrated veterans and family members who need help navigating the complex VA benefits process, in need of legal assistance, substance abuse treatment or job training. NVF employees pride themselves in walking them through every step, and then following through if they encounter problems.

Each week, NVF staff does rounds in a van to check in on homeless veterans – mostly older Vietnam era veterans who tend to cluster together in encampments after losing jobs and families to mental illness and addiction.

To these young veterans serving at NVF, the weekly workload highlights the need for more attention to the mental health of soldiers. In the case of the massacre in Afghanistan, they suggest, responsibility for that mental health lies with more than one individual.

"My reaction to Sergeant Bales … was shock," said Jose Castro, an Army veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. "But, you know, when certain things are ignored about an individual soldier… and people are … forced into situations that that aren’t healthy … (that) ultimately can lead to something like this. It’s bound to happen."

"What do you expect for a guy who’s been deployed four times? Losing buddies, getting hurt, being in firefights and so forth," agreed Army veteran Wendell Guillermo, 26.  "And whether or not the military wants to acknowledge it  … there is a breaking point."

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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 7:51 a.m. ET: Karilyn Bales says that she finds accusations that her husband killed 17 Afghan villagers "unbelievable."

The wife of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales defended her husband in an exclusive interview with Matt Lauer for TODAY, which aired Monday morning.

"I just don't think he was involved," she said. When asked by Lauer if it was a case of mistaken identity, she said: "I don't have enough information."

She later added that "nothing" would be able to change her mind that "this is not what it appears to be."

Read more on this story at TODAY.com

The Washington state woman said her husband joined the Army after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to "protect his family, friends and country. He wanted to do his part." She added that her husband is "very brave, very courageous."

Officials allege that Bales wandered off base in southern Afghanistan earlier this month and killed eight Afghan adults and nine children.

US official: Afghans paid about $50,000 per shooting spree death

'He's like a big kid himself'
According to Lauer, Bales' wife said the soldier had been very involved in raising the couple's two children.

"He is accused of killing nine children, innocent children," Lauer said to Bales' wife.

She responded that the accusations are "unbelievable to me."

"He loves children, he's like a big kid himself," the wife of the Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier said. "I have no idea what happened, but he would not ... he loves children, and he would not do that."

Bales was formally charged Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder and other crimes.

For alleged Afghan shooter, death penalty unlikely

U.S. investigators have said they believe Bales killed in two episodes, returning to his base after the first attack and later slipping away to kill again. He is reported to have surrendered without a struggle.

The 38-year-old married father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., is being held at a U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

'A bit confused'
Karilyn Bales has spoken to her husband by telephone twice since he was detained. The soldier called his wife first from overseas shortly after massacre, and then last week from Fort Leavenworth where the two talked about family matters and "reaffirmed their love for each other," said her attorney, Lance Rosen.

She said that Bales "seemed a bit confused" during the phone calls.

Death toll in Afghanistan massacre climbs to 17

The couple has two young children, a girl named Quincy and a boy named Bobby.

Fourth tour of duty
Bales was on his fourth tour of duty in a war zone, having served three tours in Iraq, where he suffered a head injury and a foot injury. His civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, had said the soldier and his family had thought he was done fighting.

Speaking to Lauer, Karilyn Bales added: "He shielded me from a lot of what he went through. He's a very tough guy."

The family has set up a defense fund to help pay for Bales' legal fees.

PTSD: Having the courage to ask for help

The Bales family had a Seattle-area home condemned, struggled to make payments on another and failed to get a promotion a year ago. Karilyn Bales put the family's Lake Tapps, Wash., home up for sale days before the rampage.

The youngest of five brothers, Bales grew up in the working class Cincinnati suburb of Norwood, Ohio, and has been described as cheerful, all around good guy. He joined the Army two months after 9/11, after a Florida investment business failed and after he had worked with a string of securities operations.

The Associated Press, NBC News and msnbc.com staff 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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AP,file

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, left, 1st platoon sergeant, Blackhorse Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division participates in an August 2011 exercise at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.

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.

 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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WASHINGTON -- Psychiatrists at the military base where Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the suspect in the killings of 16 Afghan civilians, was stationed overturned more than 40 percent of diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder since 2007, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told colleagues at a Senate hearing Wednesday.

The forensic psychiatry unit at Madigan Army Medical Center on Joint Base Lewis-McChord is being investigated for reversing diagnoses based on the expense of providing care and benefits, she added after earlier disclosing the statistics to the Seattle Times.

"Not only is it damaging for our soldiers, but it also really furthers the stigma for others that are — whether they're deciding to seek help or not today," Murray said at the hearing.

Bales was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of the 2nd Infantry Division, which is based at Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash.

Whether Bales sought treatment at Madigan is unknown, but his case brings fresh attention to the strains of war.

Army Secretary John McHugh told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee that the Army is trying to determine whether the change in diagnosis was isolated or a common practice.

The Army inspector general is conducting a system-wide review of mental health facilities to determine whether psychiatrists overturned diagnoses to save money, he added.

"To this point, we don't see any evidence of this being systemic," McHugh testified. "But as you and I have discussed," he said referring to Murray, "we want to make sure that where this was inappropriate, it was an isolated case, and if it were not, to make sure we address it as holistically as we're trying to address it at Madigan."

Of the 1,680 patients screened at Madigan, more than 690 had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, said Murray. The psychiatric team reversed more than 290 of those diagnoses. 

What Murray referred to as the "invisible wounds of war" have moved to the forefront of the national debate after the shooting spree earlier this month.

Bales, 38, is being held in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., while a military investigation continues. Bales, who enlisted in the military after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, did four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to court records and interviews.

"We have in the military writ large over 50,000 folks in uniform who have had at least four deployments," McHugh said.

Army officials said they are committed to strengthening the psychological resilience of its troops and leadership is taking deliberate steps to ensure help is available to soldiers and families dealing with PTSD and other psychological effects of war.

Army officials say soldiers sent to war may be checked up to five times, including before being deployed, during combat, once they return home and six months and a year later.

Besides lawyers, Bales' interaction limited to guards, chaplain

Every soldier returning from deployment completes what the Army calls a Post Deployment Health Assessment and a face-to-face interview with a mental health professional.

The Army screens soldiers for depression and PTSD, asking questions to find out about any social stressors, sleep disruption and other problems. Those who are detected as having problems go on to a second phase of screening.

Officials say, however, that no test is considered diagnostically definitive for mental illness in general or PTSD in particular.

More than 134,900 Army personnel were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries between 2000 and 2011. Of those, 75 percent or more than 100,000 were diagnosed as having a mild or regular concussion. Army policy calls for every service member involved in a blast, vehicle crash or a blow to the head to be medically evaluated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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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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