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January 18, 2013

Judge orders sanity review

By Gene Johnson Associated Press

SEATTLE — An Army staff sergeant accused of massacring Afghan civilians must undergo an official sanity review before a mental health defense can be presented, the military judge overseeing the case said Thursday.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales deferred entering a plea Thursday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord to 16 counts of premeditated murder and other charges related to a nighttime attack on two villages last March. The Army is seeking the death penalty.

But the judge, Col. Jeffery Nance, took up arguments over whether Bales can present a mental health defense or testimony from mental health experts, given that he has not yet participated in a “sanity board” review.

The judge ordered that to take place, but made no decisions about the conditions of the review and what information from it would be turned over to prosecutors — something prosecutors and defense attorneys have been arguing about.

Such reviews are conducted by neutral doctors tasked with discerning a defendant’s mental state at the time of the crime and whether he’s competent to stand trial.

Bales was serving his fourth deployment, and his lawyers said he may have suffered from a traumatic brain injury. His mental health has been expected to be a key part of the case.

“An accused simply cannot be allowed to claim a lack of mental responsibility through the introduction of expert testimony from his own doctors, while at the same time leaving the government with no ability to overcome its burden of proof because its doctors have been precluded from conducting any examination of the very matters in dispute,” prosecutor Maj. Robert Stelle wrote in a Jan. 3 motion obtained by The Associated Press.

Bales’ attorneys have said a traumatic brain injury may have been sustained when he was knocked out by an improvised bomb explosion during one of his tours in Iraq.

They have thus far refused to let him take part in the sanity board because the Army would not let him have a lawyer present for the examination, would not record the examination and would not appoint a neuropsychologist expert in traumatic brain injuries to the board.

However, Defense lawyer John Henry Browne said Bales might participate — as long as only certain information about the results are forwarded to prosecutors.

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