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Anonymous ID: c7f908 Sept. 17, 2024, 12:59 a.m. No.21607198   🗄️.is đź”—kun

>>21607183

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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-sniper-chris-kyle-s-killer-eddie-ray-routh-found-guilty-of-murder-and-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-a155736.html

 

Chris Kyle killer Eddie Ray Routh found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison

 

Wednesday 25 February 2015

 

had been found guilty of capital murder and that he was imposing the only sentence that was open to the court, life imprisonment without parole.

 

In an odd quirk of court procedure, Judge Cashon then heard so-called victim impact statements from family members of both Mr Kyle and his friend who also died at the hands of Routh, Chad Littlefield. Since the sentence had already been delivered, the statements in the end meant little beyond offering some form of catharsis to those who spoke, including Mr Kyle’s widow, Taya Kyle.

 

“You took the lives of two heroes, men that tried to be a friend to you. You became an American disgrace,” Mr Littlefield’s brother-in-law, Jerry Richardson, said of Routh.

 

The defence had argued to the jury that Routh, who had a recorded history of mental instability as well as drug and alcohol abuse when he was discharged from the Marines after –deployments to both Iraq and later to Haiti__ after its earthquake, was suffering from momentary insanity on a February afternoon two years ago when he shot the victims on a shooting range on a private resort near Stephenville.

 

It was in the end not an argument that the jury bought and the brevity of their deliberations last night suggested that it probably never had much traction with them. "That is not insanity. That is just cold, calculated capital murder," prosecutor Jane Starnes said in her closing argument. "He (Kyle) absolutely never saw this coming," said crime scene analyst Howard Ryan.

 

The jurors had heard emotional testimony during the trial, including from Taya Kyle, about how the two men had agreed to take Routh, whom they barely knew, to the shooting range at the Rough Creek Lodge, as a favour because they knew from his family that he was having traveling fitting back into civilian life and could benefit from afternoon letting off steam.