STEPHENVILLE, Texas — Erath
County District Court Judge Jason Cashon sentenced Eddie Ray Routh to life in
prison without the possibility of parole then turned the floor over to the
families of the two men the defendant had just been found guilty of murdering.
Relatives of “American
Sniper” Chris Kyle did not speak. But the brother and father of victim Chad
Littlefield wanted their say. Each stood to somberly and sternly address Routh.
“You took the lives of two
heroes — men who tried to be a friend to you,” said Jerry Richardson,
Littlefield's brother. “You became an American disgrace.”
Routh, an ex-Marine and
Iraq war veteran, shot the men several times while at a gun range on Feb. 2,
2013. Kyle, a former Navy SEAL and the deadliest sniper in American military
history, often took fellow veterans to the shooting range as a form of therapy.
Littlefield, 35, did not serve in the military, but often volunteered his time
to help veterans, his family said.
During the two-week trial,
the defense team tried to convince the jury that mental illness and
post-traumatic stress syndrome triggered Routh to turn on Kyle and Littlefield.
But the jury took a little
more than two hours Tuesday evening to reject the insanity defense and find
Routh guilty of capital murder.
From the defense table,
Routh looked to his right at Richardson standing at the front of the public
seating area.
“Your claims of PTSD have
been an insult to every veteran who served with honor — disgracing a proud
military with your cowardness,” Richardson said. “You wanted to be a Marine, a
real man. But you destroyed the opportunity by committing a senseless act. You
have put yourself in a world you will never escape.”
During closing arguments,
defense attorneys admitted that there’s no doubt that their client did the
crime, but asked the jury to focus on evidence that Routh, now 27, was having a
psychotic episode when he pulled the trigger.
“He didn’t kill those men
because of who he wanted to be, he killed them because he had a delusion,”
defense attorney J. Warren St. John said. “He believed in his mind that they
were going to kill him. Eddie didn’t know these men.”
If Routh had been found not
guilty by reason of insanity, he would have faced up to life in a state mental
hospital.
Kyle is somewhat of a favorite son in Stephenville. He attended college here in the
early 1990s before dropping out to rodeo fulltime and eventually joining the
Navy. Tarleton State University named him as an outstanding young alumnus
following his four tours of duty, multiple honors for service in Operation
Iraqi Freedom and the best-selling memoir-turned-movie.
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| The victims |
Defense attorneys tried to
get the trial moved elsewhere, but had their motions denied. On Tuesday,
defense attorney Tim Moore pressed the jury to not let Kyle’s status as a war
hero and the attention of the case keep them from doing their job.
“You can’t go back in there
and say, ‘Oh, I can’t do this. What would I say to my neighbor? What would I
say to my friends at church?’” Moore said. “Don’t violate your conscious just
make somebody else happy.”
Kyle’s widow, Taya, has
attended every moment of the trial, but was not in the courtroom when the
verdict was read. According to the Dallas Morning News, she reportedly stormed
out of the courtroom during closing arguments when defense attorney R. Shay
Isham used Chris Kyle's name to illustrate that Routh was insane.
In their closing arguments,
prosecutors said Routh may have been high from drinking liquor and smoking
marijuana earlier in the day, but that he was too calculated in the shootings
and his getaway to be legally insane.
They maintain that Routh
timed it for Kyle to run out of bullets, then surprised both men by shooting them
in the back multiple times. Prosecutor Jane Starnes described Routh as cold and
said he took a commemorative handgun belonging to the former SEAL.
“That’s the one that had
the Navy insignia on it,” Starnes told the jury. “He took that one because it
was a trophy.”
Routh fled in Kyle’s Ford
truck and drove more than 100 miles back to the Dallas area where he picked up
his dog, told his sister that he was headed to Oklahoma, purchased burritos at
Taco Bell and eventually surrendered following a high-speed chase with police.
“Crazy don’t run,” Starnes
said. “Just because it was a senseless crime, doesn’t make a person insane.”
Erath County District
Attorney Alan Nash reminded the jury that Routh had used PTSD as a defense
during previous brushes with the law. Nash concluded the prosecution’s closing
argument on Tuesday by pulling on panel’s local civic pride.
“He’s gone to the deep well
of excuses for his violent behavior too many times,” Nash said. “This defendant
gunned down two men in cold blood, shooting them in the back, in our county.
Find him guilty.”
Though it was an option,
prosecutors elected not to seek the death penalty. The irony wasn’t lost on Don
Littlefield as he spoke to his son’s killer in the courtroom.
“The State of Texas has
decided to spare your life which is more than you were willing to give Chad,”
Littlefield said. “As much as we hurt, and are devastated by our tremendous
loss, by the grace of God, we will not become angry, bitter or resentful. That
would keep us bound to you, and you not deserve that honor.”
Routh told investigators that
he didn’t even know Chad Littlefield’s name when he shot him at least six
times.
“Now you will have the rest
of your wasted life — each and every day of it — to remember his name,” Don
Littlefield said. “Let me remind you, his name is Chad Littlefield: C-H-A-D
L-I-T-T-L-E-F-I-E-L-D.”
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