1.
LAWYER SAYS U.S. BLOCKS INVESTIGATION OF AFGHAN MASSACRE
By Bill Rigby
** Lawyer says U.S. imposing 'information blackout' -- Says access to injured denied, potential witnesses scatter -- Mental assessment of Bales could take months -- Too early to decide on PTSD defense **
Reuters
March 30, 2012
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/lawyer-says-us-blocks-investigation-of-afghan-massacre/
SEATTLE -- The lawyer defending the U.S. soldier accused of murdering seventeen Afghan civilians claims U.S. authorities are blocking his ability to investigate the incident.
John Henry Browne, the lawyer for Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, said U.S. forces in Afghanistan have prevented his team from interviewing injured civilians at a hospital in Kandahar, and are allowing other potential witnesses to scatter, making it difficult to track them down.
"When prosecutors don't cooperate, it's because they are concerned about the strength of their case," said Browne at a press conference at his downtown Seattle office on Friday.
Bales was formally charged last week with the murders of eight adults and nine children in a pre-dawn shooting rampage in southern Afghanistan on March 11, which further eroded U.S.-Afghan relations already strained by a decade of war.
He could face the death penalty if convicted.
No date has been set for a trial, but U.S. military prosecutors are putting together their case while Browne is preparing his defense.
Browne said he has a team of investigators in Afghanistan now, but they are receiving little cooperation from military prosecutors who filed the charges.
"We are facing an almost complete information blackout from the government, which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client," he said in a statement released earlier on Friday.
A reliable account of the events of the night of the massacre has not yet emerged. A recent report indicated Afghan villagers doubt Bales acted alone. Other reports suggest Bales left his base twice during the night.
"I don't believe that's the case, but we don't know for sure at this point," Browne said on Friday.
Browne said his investigators had spoken to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan but had not managed to contact any witnesses.
DENIED ACCESS
"When we tried to interview the injured civilians being treated at Kandahar Hospital we were denied access and told to coordinate with the prosecution team," Browne said in the earlier statement.
"The next day the prosecution team interviewed the civilians injured. We found out shortly after the prosecution interviews of the injured civilians that the civilians were all released from the hospital and there was no contact information for them." That means potential witnesses will scatter and could prove unreachable, Browne said.
Prosecutors had not shared their investigative findings with his team, and would not share images captured by a surveillance camera on a blimp above the base which the Army says shows Bales returning to the camp after the alleged shooting, he said.
The next step in the case is for Bales -- who is being held at a military detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas -- to undergo a mental assessment by Army doctors independent of both the prosecution and defense, to determine if he is fit to stand trial, known as a "sanity board" in the Army.
That could take several months, Browne said.
After that has occurred, the military justice system requires a preliminary hearing, known as an "Article 32" hearing, to establish whether there is a strong enough case to proceed to a court martial.
Browne said it was too early to say whether post-traumatic stress disorder would feature in his defense against the charges. "I don't know whether it will at all," said Browne.
"First thing we have to find out is whether the government has a case. Until we're convinced the government has a case, we're not going to start speculating on what our defenses are going to be." (Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Todd Eastham and Paul Simao)
2.
Local news
BROWNE ACCUSES GOVERNMENT OF WITHHOLDING EVIDENCE IN CASE AGAINST BALES
By Maureen O'Hagan
** Seattle attorney John Henry Browne on Friday accused government prosecutors of withholding critical evidence about the massacre of seventeen Afghan civilians on March 11. **
Seattle Times
March 30, 2012
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017878046_bales31m.html?prmid=4939
It was Friday afternoon in Pioneer Square and attorney John Henry Browne was doing what he does so well: holding court before eight television cameras saying he had lost faith in the government.
Had you just stumbled in, you might even have thought Browne was prosecuting a case against the government. Instead, he was defending his client, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who is accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians.
Earlier in the day, Browne's complaints were scooped up by the wire services. With the afternoon news conference, his views would be pushed out even further by local and national media.
"We've been misled," Browne said, adding that government prosecutors were "violating the trust we had."
His evidence? Mainly, that his defense team was unable to interview Afghan witnesses who survived the March 11 massacre.
Browne said prosecutors had promised that if he sent someone to Kandahar Hospital, they could talk to the injured. When the unnamed staffer showed up at the hospital, he or she was told to come back tomorrow, Browne said.
"The next day, they had all been released from the hospital and scattered," Browne said, adding that the government provided no contact information. "That was a violation of trust," he said.
In addition, Browne said the government has not provided the defense team with medical records, nor has it allowed them to view video taken by a surveillance blimp.
"My gut from a defense lawyer's standpoint is that when prosecutors don't cooperate, there's a reason," Browne said. "And the reason is they don't have much of a case."
Responding to Browne's latest parry, Maj. Chris Ophardt, an Army spokesman, issued a brief statement: "The . . . Bales investigation is still ongoing. The prosecution will provide the defense with evidence in accordance with the Rules for Courts-Martial and the Military Rules of Evidence. Within these guidelines the prosecution is and has been communicating with the defense."
Dan Conway, a defense lawyer who's handled about a half-dozen other cases involving civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Browne's complaints may be coming too soon.
"There are weaknesses in the case, there's no question about that," he said.
However, with 17 bodies, "it's awfully early to conclude the case is falling apart."
In his experience, including his defense of one of the five Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldiers accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport during a 2010 deployment, military prosecutors have been mostly cooperative.
While Conway agreed that it is indeed "critical for the defense team to talk to the witnesses as soon as possible to lock them into their testimony," it hasn't even been three weeks since the attacks. It appears the government is still investigating, and they won't turn over all the evidence until they're done, he said.
Either way, it's "going to be an uphill fight for the duration," given the complexity of the case and the logistics, Conway said.
At the news conference, Browne was asked whether post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) will play a role in the defense. At this point, he said, he can't say.
On Thursday, he learned that the government had requested a mental evaluation -- standard procedure in these kinds of cases.
Bales will be examined by doctors to determine if he has a mental illness, PTSD, or a concussive brain injury, and if he's competent to stand trial, among other questions.
To be sure, the entire case, from the moment the news broke earlier this month, is unique. The government has said virtually nothing on the record. Much of the "news" has come from leaks. The witnesses are thousands of miles away. You need a visa and several layers of clearances to get there. Going out to a village to find witnesses could get you killed.
Testimony from the villagers is potentially crucial in light of statements some have made to journalists and Afghan investigators that several other U.S. soldiers, and U.S. helicopters, were present during the attacks.
"I've heard that report, and that's another thing. I'm really curious as to why the government wouldn't allow us to access these witnesses, because then I would answer your question," Browne told the Los Angeles Times.
But he professed skepticism about reports that other soldiers were present.
"From what I know as Sgt. Bales' lawyer, I don't believe that's the case," he told the *Times*.
Meanwhile, the case will be tried in military court, which has its own rules. Unlike in civilian court, Browne said, "you can't go to a judge right now and complain."
So is there any avenue for recourse, a reporter at the news conference asked?
"Yeah," Browne said. "You."
Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
3.
IS ROBERT BALES COMPETENT TO STAND TRIAL? ARMY PREPARES TO ASK
By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times
March 30, 2012
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-robert-bales-competency-20120330,0,4904834.story
SEATTLE -- U.S. Army prosecutors have moved to open a legal review to determine whether Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is mentally competent to stand trial on charges of murdering 17 unarmed civilians in southern Afghanistan.
Attorney John Henry Browne, who is representing Bales in the case, said he was notified that the Army is moving to start a sanity board hearing. During that proceeding, teams of psychiatrists and neurologists will prepare findings on Bales’ mental health at the time of the attacks and attempt to determine whether issues such as combat stress or a prior brain injury could have rendered him not responsible for his actions.
Browne said it's too early to determine whether the defense will try to argue that Bales was not mentally competent. Under military law, the burden of winning an acquittal based on lack of mental responsibility is a heavy one: The defense would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Bales had a “severe” mental disease or defect that made him unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of an act.
Successful mental health defenses are extremely rare in military courts.
“Let’s see if they can prove a case before we answer that question,” Browne said.
He said the defense team that he dispatched to Afghanistan to begin preparing a case has run into obstacles, apparently put up by U.S. prosecutors, in trying to interview witnesses to the killings in a remote region of Kandahar province near the small special operations base where Bales was based.
“People on our staff in Afghanistan went to the hospital where there supposedly were eyewitnesses to this . . . and we were told by the prosecutors to come back the next day, which is fine. We went back the next day, and they’d all been released from the hospital and they’d all been scattered throughout Afghanistan. That was a violation of the trust we had in the prosecutors,” Browne said.
“We’ve been misled greatly. . . . They were promised to be there, and they were not,” he said, adding that there isn't much hope of finding the witnesses now. “People just disappear into the Afghan countryside.”
Browne apparently felt he was forced to hold a news conference to air his displeasure, reflecting one of the realities of military law. Prosecutors aren’t required to provide defense attorneys with information about witnesses and evidence until shortly before the hearing. At that hearing, as yet unscheduled in Bales’ case, a military judge decides whether there is enough evidence to hold a full court-martial.
Browne said he had been under the impression that military authorities intended to cooperate in the defense’s attempts to get a head start on what promises to be a complex and high-stakes case.
Testimony from the villagers is potentially crucial in light of statements some have made to journalists and Afghan investigators that several other U.S. soldiers, and U.S. helicopters, were present during the attacks.
“I’ve heard that report, and that’s another thing. I’m really curious as to why the government wouldn’t allow us to access these witnesses, because then I would answer your question,” Browne said.
But he professed skepticism about reports that other soldiers were present. “From what I know as Sgt. Bales’ lawyer, I don’t believe that’s the case,” he said.
U.S. officials have said villagers may have mistaken the teams of soldiers who went out looking for Bales as participants in the shootings.
Browne did appear to confirm reports that Bales is thought by prosecutors to have made two separate forays out of the U.S. base that night, first attacking one village, and then returning briefly to the base before setting out for the other.
“I’m very, very surprised by this supposedly being new information,” Browne said in response to a question about whether Bales is thought to have returned to the base in the midst of the attacks. “That he supposedly went out and came back, that’s not new. That was in the original report that we got from the government a week ago.”
But he rejected other reports that Bales had been drinking with other soldiers at the base on the night of the attacks.
“As far as I know right now, there’s no evidence . . . that Sgt. Bales was under the influence of any alcohol that night, period,” he said.
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