By: Doualy Xaykaothao, KERA NEWS
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a movie out, called American Sniper. It’s kind of a hit…and some people even say it was robbed of Best Picture at the Oscars last weekend.
MOVIE CLIP: “I’m willing to meet my creator and answer for every shot that I took”
That’s the actor, Bradley Cooper… the real Chris Kyle, the cowboy who was born in Odessa, talked to KERA’s KRYS BOYD on Think, about his tours in Iraq, a year before the retired Navy SEAL died.
Chris Kyle: “My wife said I did change, that I became harder, more detached and I’m sure I did. It’s difficult. When you go over there, and you see the things that you see, it’s hard not to start putting up defenses and try to keep people away from you at arm’s length, so you can be the man the government expects you to be.”
Kyle was that, and so much more, before a 25-year-old former Marine with a history of PTSD put six bullets into Kyle, and seven into his best friend Chad Littlefield two years ago.
Two weeks ago, in Texas versus Eddie Ray Routh, Kyle’s widow, Taya, was the first on the stand.
Taya Kyle: “We were at the house…trying to hurry and get to where we were supposed to go…and so he had gone around the house one way. And like comedy, we found each other in the hallway, and.”
She told her husband on that fateful day to make sure Littlefield was comfortable with this young veteran before they went to a gun range at a high-end resort. It would be their last meeting.
Taya Kyle:“We just said we loved each other, and we gave each other a kiss and a hug like we always did.”
The defendant didn’t testify, but the 10 female and 2 male jurors saw videos, one where Routh is in the back of a police car.
Routh: “I’ve been so paranoid and schizophrenic all day I don’t know what to even think of the world right now. I don’t know if I’m insane, sane, I don’t know what’s sane right now.”
He tells an officer he doesn’t know what’s sane right now. A parade of witnesses appeared before Judge Jason Cashon.
Jason Cashon:“Do you solemnly swear that the testimony…”
And it went on like that, through some 30 experts…from Texas Rangers to New Jersey forensic specialist Howard J. Ryan.
Howard Ryan: “It’s very obvious that he never saw it coming. He was shot in the face, on the right side of his body, either all in one violent episode or in two.”
Dr. Mitchell Dunn, a psychiatrist who evaluated Routh for hours on the night of the shootings.
Dr. Dunn: “Ya know, he hadn’t smoked, yet he got psychotic, I think is clear evidence that he has an underlying psychotic illness, that his episodes of psychosis are not related to the cannibus.”
Nine days of testimony, and finally, the closing arguments … Here’s Defense attorney Shay Isham and J. Warren St. John…
Shay Isham: “You can’t ask Jodi Routh to warn Chris Kyle that he was crazy, and then ask this jury to not find him crazy.”
St. John: “He killed those men because he had a delusion. He believed in his mind that they were going to kill him.”
Prosecutors Jane Starnes and Alan Nash…
Jane Starnes: “You reasonable people of Erath County know that that story about the hybrid pig men and the pig assassins is a load of hogwash.”
Alan Nash: “This defendant gunned down two men, in cold blood, shooting them in the back, in OUR county. Find him guilty.”
And the JURY did, fast. Outside the courtroom, Taya Kyle didn’t speak; Chad Littlefield’s mom did…
Littlefield’s Mom: “We’ve waited two years, for God to get justice for us, on behalf of our son, and as always God has proved to be faithful.”
Doualy Xaykaothao, KERA News, Stephenville.
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