U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was formally charged Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder, six counts of attempted murder, as well as other charges. The formal accusations come almost two weeks after Bales allegedly walked door to door on the morning of March 11th and shot Afghan civilians asleep in their homes; after the killings he attempted to burn the bodies. His victims included nine children, one of whom was only two years old.
It's the worst atrocity that an American soldier has been accused of committing against Afghan civilians in the ten year old war in Afghanistan. If convicted by a military court, Bales could face the death penalty.
Bales, 38, was read the charges at the U.S. military's prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he has been held for the past week, MSNBC reported.
His civilian Seattle lawyer, John Henry Browne, has indicated he will question the Army's decision to deploy Bales to Afghanistan in December with a concussive brain injury sustained on his third tour in Iraq. "Some people do six or seven tours, but the question is whether the last tour was too much for someone with a concussive brain injury," he told journalists in Lansing, Kansas last week, ahead of meeting with Bales in Leavenworth.
He said Bales has only a hazy memory of what transpired the night in question. Pentagon officials said that alcohol was found in Bales' living area, but Browne has not indicated if he believed it played a role in Bales' alleged acts.
But the charges of premeditated murder indicate that military prosecutors "plan to argue that he consciously conceived the killings," the MSNBC report said. "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."
Bales' defense team may try to argue that his acts "were not premeditated," Daniel Conway, a military lawyer who represented another U.S. soldier charged in 2010 with killing Afghan civilians, told Yahoo News this week. That could possibly get his charges reduced to lesser offenses, such as second-degree murder or even manslaughter.
Such determinations "are very relevant" in deciding whether Bales will face the death penalty for his alleged acts, Conway said.
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