Bales Defense Must Decide Strategy
Apr 24, 2013
Tacoma News Tribune
by Adam Ashton
Attorneys for the Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier accused of murdering 16 Afghan civilians last spring are five weeks from a deadline for declaring whether they intend to use a mental health defense at his court-martial.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales faces the death penalty on charges that he slipped out of his combat outpost by himself twice in the early hours of March 11, 2012, to murder the civilians in their homes and to wound six more noncombatants.
His lawyers have said for the past year that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and combat-related head injuries, suggesting those ailments overcame him on what was his fourth combat deployment from Lewis-McChord since 2003.
Army judge Col. Jeff Nance on Tuesday ordered the lawyers to signal by May 29 whether they plan to argue that Bales' mental health ailments diminished his responsibility for the massacre in Kandahar province's Panjwai district.
They also must hand to prosecutors by that date a summary of a sanity review Bales recently completed if they plan to call a mental health expert to testify at any point.
"Bottom line is, on the 29th of May the defense has to advise the government if they are going to defend on lack of mental responsibility," Nance said.
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