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History
> 2015 > USA > Justice (I)
James E. Holmes left the courtroom in Centennial, Colo.,
after his sentencing Wednesday in the 2012 Aurora theater
rampage.
Pool photo by Rj Sangosti
James Holmes Gets 12 Life Sentences in Aurora Shootings
By JULIE TURKEWITZ
NYT
AUG. 26, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/us/james-holmes-gets-12-life-sentences-in-aurora-shootings.html
James Holmes
Gets 12 Life Sentences
in Aurora Shootings
AUG. 26, 2015
The New York Times
By JULIE TURKEWITZ
DENVER — In an emotional end to the court drama that has
preoccupied Colorado, Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. on Wednesday issued 12 life
sentences in prison to James E. Holmes, who fatally shot 12 people in a movie
theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora three years ago and wounded 70 others.
The judge also imposed 3,318 years in prison on Mr. Holmes for his nonlethal
crimes, including attempted murder.
“Get the defendant out of my courtroom,” Judge Samour said from the bench before
Mr. Holmes, wearing a red prison suit, walked out of Courtroom 201 for the last
time.
This month, a jury had elected to sentence Mr. Holmes to life in prison rather
than the death penalty, which prosecutors had sought. On Wednesday, it was up to
the judge to decide the penalty for Mr. Holmes’s nonlethal crimes. Later, the
Colorado Corrections Department will evaluate him and decide which prison is
most fitting.
Before reading the sentence, Judge Samour spent more than an hour delivering an
impassioned speech to the crowded gallery, defending the justice system to
victims’ families and others who had said that they felt Mr. Holmes had
prevailed because his life had been spared.
“The defendant will never be a free man again — ever,” Judge Samour said. “He
will be behind bars in a locked facility every day for the rest of this life.”
At times, Judge Samour appeared to choke back tears. Near the end of his
address, he called the case “a display in contrast.”
“Whereas the defendant had a long-lasting hatred of mankind,” he said, “the
victims who have come in here and addressed the court have shown all that is
good about humanity.”
In July, a jury found Mr. Holmes guilty, rejecting his lawyers’ claim that he
was legally insane when he committed the crimes. In subsequent deliberations, at
least one juror said she could not impose the death penalty on Mr. Holmes;
because the decision was not unanimous, he was given the life sentences.
This week, dozens of victims rose to testify on how Mr. Holmes’s crimes had
affected their lives. Arlene Holmes, his mother, also spoke, crying as she
delivered an apology to the victims and their families. She said that she knew
her son felt remorse, but that his medications and mental illness made it
difficult for him to convey.
Mr. Holmes’s lawyers said they would let the verdict stand and would not file
appeals.
In the prelude to issuing his sentence, Judge Samour mentioned a woman who had
testified that she wanted Mr. Holmes to feel the same pain she did. “I
completely understand why she feels that way,” he said. “But we can’t do that.
Why? We’re a civilized society. If we subscribe to the ‘eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth’ philosophy, we would be no different than the criminal.”
Judge Samour took issue with those who had called the trial a waste of time,
citing some of the people whose testimony had brought humanity to the dead: the
mothers of Alexander Teves, Jessica Ghawi, A. J. Boik, and Jesse Childress; a
daughter of Gordon Cowden; and the ex-husband of Rebecca Wingo, who told the
jury that “she was fearless and wild, yet cultured and intelligent.”
A version of this article appears in print on August 27, 2015,
on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline:
Aurora Gunman Receives 12 Life Terms in Prison.
James Holmes Gets 12 Life Sentences in Aurora Shootings,
NYT, AUGUST 26, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/us/
james-holmes-gets-12-life-sentences-in-aurora-shootings.html
When Innocence Is No Defense
AUG. 12, 2015
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor
By JULIE SEAMAN
ATLANTA — SUPPOSE someone has been convicted of a serious crime,
but new evidence emerges proving his innocence. Does he have a constitutional
right to be freed?
The answer might seem obvious, but it is far from clear that the Constitution
protects an innocent person against incarceration, or even execution, if his
original trial was otherwise free of defects. Despite growing awareness about
the problems of unreliable witness identification, questionable forensic
evidence and inadequate legal representation of indigent defendants, the Supreme
Court has repeatedly declined to decide this basic question — even though some
115 prisoners have been exonerated from death row since 1989.
Now the fate of a 41-year-old man in Georgia raises the question anew.
In 2001, a young woman came home from church in Thunderbolt, Ga., to find a
stranger burgling her apartment. When she walked in on him, he blindfolded her,
tied her up and threatened to kill her. He then sexually assaulted her while
wearing a pair of blue and white batting gloves.
Around this time, two acquaintances, Sandeep Bharadia and Sterling Flint, were
involved in a dispute: Mr. Bharadia had reported his car stolen, accusing Mr.
Flint. While investigating Mr. Bharadia’s complaint, the police in Savannah
visited the home of Mr. Flint’s girlfriend.
There they found a computer and jewelry belonging to the young woman from
Thunderbolt, as well as a knife and crowbar. The distinctive batting gloves were
with this stash. The girlfriend told the police that Mr. Flint had left the
items at her house, telling her they were his.
When the police questioned Mr. Flint, he said that he had gotten the items from
Mr. Bharadia and was holding them for him. At trial, he testified that he had
never worn the gloves. The two men were charged as co-defendants in the crimes
against the young woman; Mr. Flint struck a deal with prosecutors, receiving a
sentence of 24 months, and testified against Mr. Bharadia.
Mr. Bharadia has always maintained his innocence. There was no physical evidence
that tied him to the crime. He claimed that he was 250 miles away in Atlanta
when the crime was being committed. At trial, the only evidence besides Mr.
Flint’s testimony was the victim’s identification of Mr. Bharadia. (Witness
identification is persuasive to juries, but misidentification has been a
significant factor in a majority of convictions later overturned by DNA
evidence.)
The police and prosecutors did not test the stolen items for DNA, and any
evidence aside from the gloves has apparently been lost or destroyed by the
state. For reasons unknown, Mr. Bharadia’s trial attorney did not request DNA
testing.
At the end of the 2003 trial, the jury returned a guilty verdict, and Mr.
Bharadia was sentenced to life without parole.
His appellate counsel later made a motion for a new trial and asked to have the
gloves tested for DNA evidence. The court allowed this, and the results showed
that there was female DNA on the outside of the gloves and male DNA — but not
Mr. Bharadia’s — on the inside.
The court declined to order DNA testing of Mr. Flint, and no new
trial went ahead. But several years later, the Georgia Innocence Project took on
Mr. Bharadia’s case, and his new attorneys filed a motion that the DNA results
be run through the national Codis DNA database. Finally, in 2012, there was a
hit: The male DNA belonged to Mr. Flint.
With this new evidence, Mr. Bharadia’s lawyers moved once again for a new trial,
so that a jury could consider the DNA evidence suggesting that Mr. Flint, rather
than Mr. Bharadia, had worn the gloves used during the assault. However, under
Georgia precedent, a defendant is not entitled to a new trial based on new
evidence if the court finds that he could have discovered the evidence at the
time of the original trial, had he or his lawyer been diligent enough. Such
requirements, which are common, are designed to prevent convictions from being
endlessly re-examined.
The Georgia Supreme Court ultimately ruled that nothing prevented Mr. Bharadia’s
original attorney from requesting DNA testing of the gloves before the trial. (I
filed an amicus brief in this case.) Mr. Bharadia’s motion for a retrial was
therefore denied — even though the trial court recognized that this evidence
“would probably produce a different verdict.”
Of course, the DNA match does not establish Mr. Bharadia’s innocence beyond all
doubt. But he continues to serve a life sentence for a crime that the court
acknowledges he probably didn’t commit.
What is most troubling about the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision is that the
issue of innocence becomes irrelevant if there has been a failure of due
diligence. In effect, the ruling elevates finality over justice to the point
that an innocent person can be imprisoned, even executed, because of errors made
by his lawyer. Absent a constitutional safety net, an innocent person convicted
after a procedurally adequate trial is out of luck.
Faulty convictions happen for many reasons: because juries are composed of human
beings, who are fallible; because witnesses feel certain but can be mistaken;
and because defense lawyers, particularly those representing indigent
defendants, are notoriously overworked and underpaid. The issue is what courts
should do in the face of strong evidence that the wrong person has been
punished.
Mr. Bharadia now has a habeas corpus petition pending that seeks his release
from unlawful imprisonment. If denied by Georgia courts, his case would present
an excellent vehicle for the United States Supreme Court to decide, once and for
all, that incarceration or execution of an innocent person is constitutionally
impermissible.
Julie Seaman is an associate professor of law at Emory
University.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 12, 2015,
on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline:
When Innocence Is No Defense.
When Innocence Is No Defense,
NYT, AUGUST 12, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/opinion/when-innocence-is-no-defense.html
Life Sentence for James Holmes,
Aurora Theater Gunman
AUG. 7, 2015
The New York Times
By JACK HEALY
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — In a decision that surprised many in this
community, a jury sentenced James E. Holmes on Friday to life in prison with no
chance of parole, rejecting the death penalty for the man who carried out a 2012
shooting rampage that killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater.
As the courtroom waited for Judge Carlos Samour Jr. to review the verdict, only
the sound of him turning pages could be heard. Family members of the dead who
sat through three months of wrenching, sometimes grisly testimony held hands and
closed their eyes. Mr. Holmes stood flanked by his lawyers, one of them holding
his arm. A few feet away, his parents stood up to see better and gripped each
other.
Then the judge read each sentence of life, noting that jurors were unable to
reach a unanimous verdict on any of the counts against Mr. Holmes. In Colorado,
death sentences must be unanimous. If even one person dissents, the sentence is
life in prison.
After court on Friday, a juror who identified herself only by her juror number —
17 — said one juror had solidly opposed death. Nine jurors had favored death and
two were unsure, but one wanted a life sentence.
“There was nothing further to discuss at that point,” Juror 17 said. “It only
takes one.”
Mr. Holmes showed little emotion as the sentence was read, standing before the
judge with his hands in his pockets even as his mother collapsed into her
husband. One of the police officers who had responded to the attack at the
theater sobbed, while others sat stoically.
Some families in the gallery cried quietly or slumped in their chairs; one man
stormed out of the courtroom. Many had wanted death for the man responsible for
so much carnage, but others had said they simply wanted the ordeal to be over,
and had hoped to avoid the years of appeals that a death sentence would bring
and focus instead on their families and memories of loved ones.
Afterward, some family members expressed anger, with the grandfather of a slain
6-year-old girl saying he suspected that a death-penalty foe had infiltrated the
jury. Others said the mere passing of a sentence, whether for life or death, was
never going to bring them closure or an end to missing their sons and daughters.
“Our lives are forever altered,” said Sandy Phillips, whose daughter, Jessica
Ghawi, was killed. Ms. Phillips said it was difficult to think of her daughter’s
killer getting letters in prison, but “that is what it is.”
Dave Hoover, whose nephew A. J. Boik was killed, said the process of grieving
together and wading through the long trial over three years had made a family
out of the people from Illinois, Arizona, Texas, Colorado and beyond whose loved
ones had been killed. “We’re going to have a little more pain, a little more
hurt in our lives,” he told reporters outside the courthouse. “But the sun will
come up.”
“He’s still living and breathing,” said Robert Sullivan, grandfather of Veronica
Moser-Sullivan, 6, the youngest killed that night. “Our loved ones are gone.”
Since Mr. Holmes was convicted last month of more than 160 counts of murder and
attempted murder, his lawyers and prosecutors have been putting questions of his
fate before the jury of nine women and three men.
Prosecutors, emphasizing the human toll and indiscriminate cruelty of opening
fire on a happy crowd of moviegoers, argued that he should join the three other
men on Colorado’s death row. In an earlier court filing, defense lawyers said
they had offered to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison, but the
district attorney, George Brauchler, pursued a capital trial, saying that in
this case, “Justice is death.”
Prosecutors argued that the rampage was so horrible, and the toll Mr. Holmes
exacted was so great, that death by lethal injection was the only just
punishment.
After the verdict was read, execution opponents in Colorado criticized Mr.
Brauchler’s decision to pursue the death penalty, saying it needlessly stretched
out the legal process through a painful, three-month trial that cost millions of
dollars.
“We are extremely disheartened by the wastefulness of the trial, which could
have been avoided two years ago,” Christopher Decker, president of the Colorado
Criminal Defense Bar, said in a statement.
Outside the courthouse, as clouds swept over, Mr. Brauchler said he was
disappointed in the decision, and had apologized to the families of the victims
for how the trial concluded.
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But he said he still believed death was the appropriate sentence. He added that
when the defense lawyers had made their plea offer two years ago, they had
refused his requests to have Mr. Holmes examined by an independent mental-health
expert, and had refused to turn over materials including his medical records and
a spiral notebook in which he recorded his homicidal fantasies.
“They said, ‘You get none of it,’ ” he said.
Throughout the trial, defense lawyers said it had not been hatred or a desire
for notoriety that propelled Mr. Holmes to plot and carry out the massacre, but
a deepening form of schizophrenia that infected his mind with powerful delusions
that killing people somehow increased his “human capital.”
The sentence surprised many because the jurors returned with their decision
after just seven hours, and appeared united during previous deliberations. They
found Mr. Holmes guilty after about 12 hours and had walked together to the
precipice of sentencing him to death, agreeing after earlier sentencing
deliberations that he was eligible to receive the death penalty.
But defense lawyers emphasized that jurors had no legal obligation to sentence
him to death, and they urged jurors to listen to their own moral compasses, no
matter what other jurors wanted.
Two court-appointed psychiatrists who examined Mr. Holmes — and who testified
for prosecutors during the guilt phase of his trial — concluded that he was
mentally ill. But, they said, he was able to know his actions were wrong when
just after midnight on July 20, 2012, he strode into Theater 9 in suburban
Aurora, clad in black body armor and armed with tear-gas canisters, a shotgun, a
handgun and an assault rifle, and began spraying the crowd with ammunition he
had amassed over several weeks. Nevertheless, the doctors said the shooting most
likely would never have happened if not for Mr. Holmes’s mental illness. The
defense seized on that point in arguing to spare his life.
The shooting during a midnight premiere of a Batman movie, “The Dark Knight
Rises,” was one of the worst mass attacks in Colorado, a state also scarred by
the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. It turned a midnight movie filled
with teenagers and families into a bloody melee in which victims fell between
the seats and boyfriends died shielding their girlfriends. Seventy people were
wounded, including some who now are paralyzed, walk with canes or live with
nightmares and bolts of pain.
The families of victims said they wanted to keep their focus and any public
attention on the lives of their loved ones, and on the dozens of survivors
grappling with chronic pain and coping with nightmares and grief. As for the man
who did it, Ms. Phillips’s husband, Lonnie Phillips, said, “We want him to go
into oblivion.”
Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on August 8, 2015,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Theater Gunman Is Spared Death in Aurora Case.
Life Sentence for James Holmes, Aurora Theater Gunman,
NYT, AUGUST 7, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/us/
jury-decides-fate-of-james-holmes-aurora-theater-gunman.html
Cleveland Officer
Acquitted of Manslaughter
in 2012 Deaths
MAY 23, 2015
The New York Times
By MITCH SMITH
A Cleveland police officer who climbed onto the hood of a car and
fired repeatedly at its unarmed occupants in 2012 was acquitted of manslaughter
on Saturday by an Ohio judge.
The trial of the officer, Michael Brelo, played out amid broader questions about
how the police interact with African-Americans and use force, in Cleveland and
across the country.
Officer Brelo was one of several officers who shot at Timothy Russell and his
passenger, Malissa Williams, during a chase through the Cleveland area on Nov.
29, 2012. Police officers fired 137 rounds at the car, prosecutors have said,
including 49 by Officer Brelo.
Other officers stopped firing after Mr. Russell’s Chevy Malibu was surrounded by
the police and came to a stop, but prosecutors said Officer Brelo climbed onto
the car’s hood and fired at least 15 rounds from close range, including the
fatal shots.
Mr. Russell and Ms. Williams, who were black, died of their wounds. Officer
Brelo, 31, is white. Prosecutors said Officer Brelo’s actions crossed the line
from justifiable to reckless when he climbed onto the car’s hood.
“We’re asking our officers, based on their training, not to be compelled by fear
to kill people when there’s other reasonable, objectively reasonable, options
available to you,” said James Gutierrez, an assistant county prosecutor, in
closing arguments. “And there was. He wanted to kill.”
Officer Brelo opted for a bench trial before Judge John P. O’Donnell of the
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. Defense attorneys said their client had
feared for his life and believed gunfire was coming from Mr. Russell’s car. No
gun was recovered, and prosecutors said Mr. Russell and Ms. Williams had been
unarmed.
Officer Brelo’s trial drew protesters, who cited the case as an example of
overly aggressive policing in Cleveland. Last year, the Justice Department found
a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force” within the department.
The verdict came as an investigation continues into the death of Tamir Rice, a
12-year-old black boy who was holding an airsoft-type gun when a Cleveland
police officer shot him in November. That shooting, captured on video, has also
garnered national attention and resulted in protests.
In closing arguments, Patrick A. D’Angelo, one of Officer Brelo’s lawyers, said
his client believed he was under attack when he fired on the car.
“What would make him want to shoot through the windshield at another human
being?” Mr. D’Angelo said. “Could it be that he was shot at? Could it be that he
reasonably perceived that the occupants of the Malibu were shooting at him?
That’s what all the other officers perceived. That’s what Officer Brelo
perceived.”
Cleveland Officer Acquitted of Manslaughter in 2012 Deaths,
NYT, MAY 23, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/us/
michael-brelo-cleveland-police-officer-acquitted-of-manslaughter-in-2012-deaths.html
6 Baltimore Police Officers
Charged in Freddie Gray Death
MAY 1, 2015
The New York Times
By ALAN BLINDER
and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
BALTIMORE — Baltimore’s chief prosecutor charged six police
officers on Friday with a range of crimes including murder and manslaughter in
the arrest and fatal injury of Freddie Gray, a striking and surprisingly swift
turn in a case that has drawn national attention to police conduct.
The state’s attorney for Baltimore City, Marilyn J. Mosby, filed the charges
almost as soon as she received a medical examiner’s report that ruled Mr. Gray’s
death a homicide, and a day after the police concluded their initial
investigation and handed over their findings. Officials had cautioned that it
could take considerable time for her office to complete its own investigation
and decide whether to prosecute.
In a city rocked by unrest this week, and now under curfew and patrolled by
National Guard troops, Ms. Mosby’s announcement on the steps of the War Memorial
downtown drew cheers from the assembled crowd while a nearby cordon of officers
in riot gear looked on stonily. As word spread, people in parts of the city took
to the streets in spontaneous celebration.
By nightfall a large demonstration wound its way through the streets and the
scene became confrontational shortly after the curfew began with small
disruptions in front of City Hall and at Pennsylvania Avenue and West North
Avenue, where people blocked traffic and taunted the police. Some arrests were
made and the crowds disbanded as the police and National Guard closed in.
The officers who were arrested, three white and three black, include a
lieutenant with 17 years on the force, several near-rookies and a woman who had
just been promoted to sergeant.
The most serious charges were brought against Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., who
was driving the van that carried Mr. Gray to a police station after his April 12
arrest. Along with involuntary manslaughter, Officer Goodson, 45, was charged
with “second-degree depraved heart murder,” which means indifference to human
life.
All six officers were arrested and appeared before a judicial officer. Bail was
set at $350,000 for four of the officers and $250,000 for the other two,
according to court records. By late Friday, court records showed the officers
had been released from jail.
The death of Mr. Gray, 25, a week after he suffered a spinal cord injury brought
to a boil long-simmering tensions between the police and poor neighborhoods in
this majority-black city, culminating in rioting and looting on Monday. More
peaceful demonstrations continued through the week after a curfew was put in
place. And the swift action by the prosecutor seemed to some to mark a turning
point after months of debate and demonstrations around the country over police
violence.
“The larger message, if there is one, is that we’re moving on these things,”
said David A. Harris, a law professor and expert on police racial issues at the
University of Pittsburgh. “We’re taking them seriously, and there’s no longer
going to be any kind of slowing down and taking it to the point where people
wonder, ‘Whatever happened to that?’ ”
In Washington, President Obama declined to comment on the charges directly, but
said that what mattered was for the justice system to work properly. “What I
think the people of Baltimore want more than anything else is the truth,” he
said. “That’s what people around the country expect.”
The Gray family said it was satisfied with the charges. “We must seize this
opportunity to reform police departments throughout this country,” said the
family’s lawyer, William H. Murphy Jr.
The Baltimore chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police called the speed of the
prosecutor politically motivated. “The actions taken today by the state’s
attorney are an egregious rush to judgment,” said Michael E. Davey, the union’s
lawyer. “We believe that these officers will be vindicated, as they have done
nothing wrong.”
Ms. Mosby faulted the police conduct at every turn. The officers who arrested
him “failed to establish probable cause for Mr. Gray’s arrest, as no crime had
been committed,” she said, describing the arrest as illegal. Officers accused
him of possession of a switchblade, but Ms. Mosby said, “The knife was not a
switchblade and is lawful under Maryland law.”
Ms. Mosby said Mr. Gray suffered a spinal injury while being transported in a
police van — and not earlier, while being arrested — and pointed to the failure
of the police to put a seatbelt on him as a crucial factor.
“Mr. Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being
handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained inside the B.P.D. wagon,” she
said.
Despite repeated stops to check on Mr. Gray, the van driver, Officer Goodson,
and other officers never belted him in, she said, at times leaving him face-down
on the van floor with his hands behind him. Though there has been speculation
that the police intentionally gave Mr. Gray a “rough ride,” intended to slam him
against the metal sides of the van, Ms. Mosby did not refer to that possibility.
She charged only Officer Goodson with second-degree murder, the most serious
crime facing the six officers; he was also accused of manslaughter, assault and
misconduct in office.
Mr. Gray’s condition deteriorated, she said, as officers repeatedly ignored his
pleas for medical attention and ignored obvious signs that he was in distress.
At one point, she said, when officers tried to check on him, Mr. Gray was
unresponsive, yet no action was taken. He died of his injuries a week later.
Lt. Brian Rice was charged with manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and
false imprisonment. Officer William G. Porter and Sgt. Alicia White were charged
with manslaughter, assault and misconduct in office. Officers Edward M. Nero and
Garrett E. Miller were charged with assault, misconduct in office and false
imprisonment.
As Ms. Mosby finished reading her announcement, the news began to ripple through
a crowd of African-American residents and activists who had pooled around her.
Edward Jenkins, 44, a motivational speaker and musician who goes by the name
Voyce, approached and could hardly contain his surprise when he was told of the
charges. “Are you serious?” he said.
Like many Baltimore residents, Mr. Jenkins, who grew up in Mr. Gray’s
neighborhood, said he thought the announcement might put a damper on further
unrest. “I think this will take some of the nervousness off of it, but they’ll
still want a guilty verdict,” he said. “It means that we’re absolutely getting a
start on justice.”
Standing on a nearby street corner, Renee James, 48, said, “There’s no need to
go tear up the city no more.”
Her friend Antoinnette White, 53, said of the riot: “Hurting innocent people was
nonsense. I cried.”
But Abdullah Moaney, 53, an information technology worker from East Baltimore,
said that “peace has lost its credibility.” Seeking to justify the violence that
broke out Monday, he said that “if it wasn’t for the riot,” charges would not
have been filed.
Marilyn J. Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore, said that Freddie Gray’s
arrest was illegal and that there was probable cause to file manslaughter
charges against the police officers involved. Publish Date May 1, 2015. Photo by
Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times.
“This is a great day, and I think we need to realize that,” said Representative
Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. “I think a message has been sent by
our state’s attorney that she treasures every life, that she values every
person.”
Elsewhere Friday, rallies celebrating May Day and calling attention to police
killings of black men emerged in cities across the country, including Oakland,
Calif., Seattle and Portland, Ore. In Manhattan, protesters marched from Union
Square to Foley Square, some chanting, “Make them pay for Freddie Gray!”
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore said most of the city’s officers
were good, but added, “To those who choose to engage in violence, brutality,
racism and brutality, let me be clear: There is no place in the Baltimore Police
Department for you.”
Mr. Gray started the fateful ride on the floor of the police van, Ms. Mosby
said. A short time later, Officer Goodson “proceeded to the back of the wagon in
order to observe Mr. Gray,” she said.
“At no point did he seek, nor did he render, any medical help for Mr. Gray,” Ms.
Mosby said.
The president commented on the filing of homicide, manslaughter and misconduct
charges against police officers in the death of Mr. Gray. By Reuters on Publish
Date May 1, 2015. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.
A few blocks later, he called a dispatcher to say that he needed help checking
on his prisoner. Another officer arrived, and the back of the van was opened.
“Mr. Gray at that time requested help and indicated that he could not breathe,”
and asked twice for a medic, Ms. Mosby said. While the officers helped him onto
the bench in the back of the van, she said, they still did not belt him in.
While they were there, she said, a call went out for a van to pick up and
transport another person who had been arrested. “Despite Mr. Gray’s obvious and
recognized need for assistance, Officer Goodson, in a grossly negligent manner,”
answered that call, rather than seeking medical help, Ms. Mosby said.
At the van’s next stop, Officer Goodson met the officers who made the initial
arrest, and a sergeant who had arrived on the scene. Opening the van once again,
they “observed Mr. Gray unresponsive on the floor of the wagon,” Ms. Mosby said.
The sergeant, she said, spoke to the back of Mr. Gray’s head, but he did not
respond. “She made no effort to look, or assess, or determine his condition,”
Ms. Mosby said.
When the van finally arrived at the Western District police station and officers
tried to remove him, “Mr. Gray was no longer breathing at all,” she said. A
medic was summoned and found Mr. Gray in cardiac arrest. Then he was rushed to a
hospital.
A. Dwight Pettit, a lawyer who handles police brutality cases in Baltimore — and
worked to help elect Ms. Mosby — said her emphasis on the officers’ lack of
probable cause in arresting Mr. Gray was significant. Rarely, he said, are
police officers prosecuted for making false arrests — and too often, they do not
worry about lacking probable cause.
He called the charges of false imprisonment “something new for police activity,
which offends the constitutional rights of citizens.”
Alan Blinder reported from Baltimore, and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York.
Richard Fausset, Rebecca White and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting
from Baltimore.
A version of this article appears in print on May 2, 2015, on page A1 of the New
York edition with the headline: Six Officers Charged in Baltimore Death.
6 Baltimore Police Officers Charged in Freddie Gray Death,
NYT, MAY 1 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/us/
freddie-gray-autopsy-report-given-to-baltimore-prosecutors.html
‘American
Sniper’ Jury
Finds
Ex-Marine Guilty of Murder
FEB. 24, 2015
The New York
Times
By MANNY
FERNANDEZ
and KATHRYN
JONES
STEPHENVILLE,
Tex. — Eddie Ray Routh, the mentally disturbed veteran who killed Chris Kyle,
the former Navy SEAL marksman who inspired the movie “American Sniper,” was
sentenced Tuesday to life in prison after a jury here found him guilty of
murder, rejecting his claims that he was legally insane at the time.
Mr. Routh and his lawyers had argued that he was not guilty by reason of
insanity and that he belonged not in prison but at a state mental hospital. His
two-week trial for the killings of Mr. Kyle and Mr. Kyle’s friend Chad
Littlefield in 2013 centered on Mr. Routh’s state of mind. Jurors had to decide
whether Mr. Routh’s erratic behavior, his delusions about hybrid pig people and
his heavy drug use were proof of insanity or evidence that he was troubled but
criminally responsible.
With the death penalty off the table, the verdict that Mr. Routh was guilty of
capital murder left him facing only one possible sentence, and the judge issued
it minutes after the verdict was announced — life in prison without parole.
The judge announced the decision in a courtroom just three miles from a movie
theater that had been playing “American Sniper” since Mr. Routh’s trial began on
Feb. 11. The movie and the trial made for a strange intersection of pop culture
and criminal law. The verdict came two days after the movie lost the Academy
Award for Best Picture to “Birdman,” and Mr. Kyle’s widow, Taya Kyle, attended
the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday, then the closing arguments here on
Tuesday.
“American Sniper” was widely seen in the Stephenville area — Mr. Kyle attended
the local university, Tarleton State University, before he joined the Navy — and
it was likely that several jurors had seen the film before they were selected
for the panel. Mr. Routh’s lawyers tried to postpone the trial and move it out
of Erath County, but the judge turned them down.
The jury deliberated for less than two and a half hours.
“We’ve waited two years for God to get justice for us on behalf of our son,”
Judy Littlefield, Mr. Littlefield’s mother, told reporters after the verdict.
“And as always, God has proven to be faithful.”
Mr. Routh, 27, shot Mr. Kyle and Mr. Littlefield in the back on Feb. 2, 2013, at
a gun range near this small town 100 miles southwest of Dallas, after Mr.
Routh’s mother had asked Mr. Kyle to befriend her son. After serving in the
Marines, Mr. Routh received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and
psychosis, and relatives testified that he had been suicidal and paranoid in the
months before the shooting.
He used two of Mr. Kyle’s handguns to shoot Mr. Kyle and Mr. Littlefield 13
times, slaying a sniper who protected Marines in Iraq with such deadly accuracy
that insurgents nicknamed him the “Devil of Ramadi.”
In several videotaped and recorded interviews and interactions with the police
that were played for the jurors, Mr. Routh gave at times puzzling explanations
about why he shot Mr. Kyle, 38, and Mr. Littlefield, 35. He spoke of fearing for
his life and believing that they were going to kill him or take his soul. He
said that Mr. Littlefield was not shooting at the range and that “that’s what
got me riled up.” He said he was offended that Mr. Kyle had not shaken his hand
when they met, was bothered by the smell of cologne in Mr. Kyle’s truck, and was
annoyed that the two men did not talk to him on the drive to the range.
“It smelled like sweet cologne,” Mr. Routh told a reporter for The New Yorker in
2013, in a phone call from jail that was recorded. “I was smelling love and
hate. They were giving me some love and hate.”
In finding Mr. Routh guilty and not legally insane, jurors appeared to have
sided with the prosecutors, who portrayed Mr. Routh not as a sympathetic,
troubled veteran but as a callous killer who stopped at Taco Bell shortly after
fleeing the scene and who knew his actions were wrong, a crucial part of the
legal test of insanity.
Mental health experts who examined Mr. Routh told the jurors that he had not
been directly involved in combat in Iraq and that he had lied about putting the
bodies of babies in a mass grave in Haiti as part of an earthquake-relief
deployment. Two experts who evaluated him for the prosecution testified that Mr.
Routh was not insane and questioned whether he had exaggerated the trauma he
experienced while in the Marines to get disability benefits and had tried to
sound schizophrenic to get out of prison.
Mr. Routh had made bizarre statements that he believed people around him were
half-pig, half-human, and that his co-workers at a cabinet shop were cannibals
who wanted to cook and eat him.
But one of the prosecution’s experts who examined Mr. Routh, Randall Price, a
Dallas forensic psychologist, testified that Mr. Routh’s statements about pig
people may have come not from psychosis but from TV shows, including an episode
from “Seinfeld” and a reality show called “Boss Hog,” two of Mr. Routh’s
favorite programs. The prosecution’s other expert, Dr. Michael Arambula, a San
Antonio forensic psychiatrist who is president of the Texas Medical Board, said
that the delusions of schizophrenics often had structure and details, but that
Mr. Routh’s statements about cannibals lacked specifics.
“It doesn’t have content,” Dr. Arambula said.
Hours after the killings, after Mr. Routh had been handcuffed and placed in the
back seat of a police car, he told officers that he was paranoid and
schizophrenic. Such a statement, Dr. Price and Dr. Arambula said, indicated that
Mr. Routh had known what he was doing and was trying to convince the authorities
that he was insane, because people with severe mental illness are often
reluctant to admit they have a problem.
“He was showing his hand,” Dr. Arambula said. “He was looking to get out of what
he had done.”
Mr. Routh’s lawyers defended his claim of schizophrenia. They called to the
stand Dr. Mitchell H. Dunn, a forensic psychiatrist who spent more than six
hours with Mr. Routh last year and who testified that the defendant had been in
a state of psychosis at the time of the attack and had shot the two men because
he believed that they were “pig assassins” sent to kill him.
Dr. Dunn and Mr. Routh’s lawyers used Mr. Kyle’s own words to strengthen their
point. As Mr. Routh sat in the back seat of Mr. Kyle’s truck on the drive to the
range, Mr. Kyle sent a text message to Mr. Littlefield, who sat next to him in
the passenger seat, writing, “This dude is straight-up nuts.” Mr. Littlefield
responded with a text of his own, asking Mr. Kyle to “watch my six,” military
parlance for “watch my back.” Dr. Dunn described the texts as “compelling
evidence.”
Doctors at a Dallas veterans’ hospital who treated Mr. Routh before the shooting
had said Mr. Routh had PTSD, but the three experts who evaluated him for the
defense and the prosecution testified that they did not think that Mr. Routh had
it. A prosecutor described Mr. Routh’s PTSD as “kind of a myth that’s come up in
this case.”
Mr. Routh, who worked as a prison guard and a weapons-maintenance specialist
known as an armorer while in the Marines, told the experts who examined him that
he had spent time in Iraq at Joint Base Balad, which he described as “plush”
because it had a movie theater and other amenities. For the humanitarian mission
in Haiti, he was aboard a ship most of the time, and none of the three experts
said they believed Mr. Routh’s claims that he had seen or come into contact with
the bodies of dead babies there.
“He said there was one time that he and another Marine thought they saw a body
in the water, but they weren’t sure,” Dr. Price said of Mr. Routh’s deployment
in Haiti in 2010.
A version of
this article appears in print on February 25, 2015, on page A11 of the New York
edition with the headline:
Life Term in ‘American Sniper’ Trial.
‘American
Sniper’ Jury Finds Ex-Marine Guilty of Murder,
NYT,
FEB. 24, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/us/
american-sniper-trial-jury-finds-ex-marine-guilty-of-murder.html
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