Eddie ray routh story9/18/2023 "We all had our strong feelings… ultimately a unanimous decision, multiple times," one of the jurors told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Wednesday morning. They tried to delay the trial arguing the hype around the movie would influence the jurors, most of whom had probably watched it. The release of the movie recently made it worse. Texas state is extremely tough on insanity pleas, and Routh's attorneys had a nearly insurmountable task of making that stick. After his arrest, he told police officers he was paranoid and schizophrenic. The prosecution, backed by experts, argued Routh knew exactly what he had done, and has started building towards an insanity plea from the time he was arrested.Īfter killing the two men, Routh stopped at a Taco Bell, a Mexican fast-food chain, and then visited relatives. Eddie Ray Routh had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorderhe’d begun talking nonsensically to relatives, sleeping erratically, fearing government surveillance, and threatening to. In interviews to police and reporters, Routh said he killed them because he feared they would kill him instead and that they wanted his soul, and he spoke of half-pigs and half-humans. Kyle had said, "This dude is straight-up nuts." Littlefield asked him to watch his back. Kyle, right, wrote a best-selling memoir about his life as a SEAL. His attorneys used a text message from Kyle to Littlefield from that fateful day as proof. Eddie Ray Routh, left, served in the Marines for four years. His defense team tried to argue that he was not guilty by reason of insanity, and should be sent to a mental institution. That he killed the two men was never in dispute. Routh, a former US Marine, had shot Kyle and Littlefield multiple times in the back at a Texas shooting range in 2013 where they had taken him as part of an effort to help him deal with post-war trauma. "And as always, God has proven to be faithful." BEFORE Clint Eastwood’s epic war story of America’s deadliest sniper, the people of Erath County, population 40,000, already had Februcircled in their calendars. "We've waited two years for God to get justice for us on behalf of our son," said Judy Littlefield, Littlefield's mother. Routh was sentenced to life in jail without parole. It was a unanimous decision, and one that reached in less than two and a half hours, ending a trial that played alongside recently released American Sniper, a film about Kyle. Former-Marine-Cpl-Eddie-Ray-Routh-stands-during-his-capital-murder-trial-He-is-charged-with-the-2013-deaths-of-Chris-Kyle-and-Chad-Littlefield-at-a-shooting-range-in-Texas-AP-photo Eddie Ray Routh stood impassively as the judge read the verdict finding him guilty of killing Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield, and then polled the jurors.
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