American Sniper Murder Trial

Chris Kyle, is a decorated American hero for his ten year military service as a Navy Seal sniper. Kyle served four tours in the Iraq War where he was nicknamed the “Devil of Ramadi” by Iraqi insurgents. The Iraqi insurants put a $20,000 bounty on his head. He is credited with being the most lethal sniper in American history with a self-reported number of more than 160 kills. Kyle retired from the military in 2009 and became an activist for war veterans with PTSD. He is the author of a 2012 bestseller, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in Military History.

After retiring, he launched a non-profit, FITCO Cares Foundation, which supplies fitness equipment to war wounded veterans to help veterans struggling with PTSD. Kyle worked with soldiers suffering from PTSD to help them assimilate back in to civilian life. On February 2, 2013 Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield were shot and killed at the Rough Creek Lodge in Texas by Eddie Ray Routh who is speculated to have been suffering from PTSD. Kyle had been working with Routh for months before Kyle and Littlefield took Routh to the shooting range for practice the day they were shot.

In 2014 American Sniper opened in four screens on Christmas Day, in order to make it eligible for Oscar consideration. The movie was the highest-grossing US film of 2014 grossing $337.4 million. Clint Eastwood directed the movie and Bradley Cooper starred as Chris Kyle. It is said that the movies success is due to great marketing and good timing. The trial, nicknamed the “American Sniper” trial, for Kyle’s killer was underway while the movie was in theaters.

On February 24, 2015 a jury in Erath County, Texas took less than two hours to convict Eddie Ray Routh of capital murder. The Judge sentenced Routh to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury had three choices, find Routh guilty of capital murder, find him not guilty, or find him not guilty by reason of insanity. A major part of Routh’s defense was the issue of PTSD and his family’s testimony of how it changed Routh from a charismatic guy into a man struggling with psychosis. With all the buzz around the trial and the movie, how can we be sure that the jurors were not influenced by the media and the movie in reaching their verdict.

Because of the popularity of Chris Kyle’s novel and the blockbuster film, the prospect of jury bias in the trial was a major concern. It has now been revealed that several of the jurors had seen the movie prior to having been selected to the jury. 800 people were summoned for jury selection with the expectation that only about half would actually appear. The prospective jurors were interviewed by lawyers from both side and filled out a 22 question questionnaire regarding their knowledge of Chris Kyle and his story. Because the movie didn’t really address the murder and Eddie Routh, his defense wasn’t too concerned with juror bias caused by seeing the movie. He said that most jurors can do the job and take an oath not to lean one way or another until all the evidence has been presented. The main question for the jurors to answer was whether or not Routh was legally insane because Routh had already confessed to the murders hours after his arrest.

You can never be sure whether jurors will be biased by outside knowledge they come to the trial with. It is the attorneys on both sides job to get a jury of people that they think will be able to put aside that knowledge and focus their verdict on the evidence presented at trial. I think in this case if the main question for the jury would have been whether or not Eddie Routh murdered Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield then having seen the movie and having background knowledge of the situation would have been more of a concern for the defense. Seven of the twelve person jury spoke with ABC News and said that they came to the unanimous decision that Routh was legally insane because the evidence showed a pattern of Routh getting intoxicated, in to trouble, and then telling the police that he had PTSD. The jury said that the evidence showed that there was a real pattern of him using the PTSD card whenever he would get in trouble.  His attorney says that the insanity defense was the most viable defensive theory and that PTSD was never a major part of the defense strategy, it was the schizophrenia diagnosis that was the basis of the defense.

No one will ever know if the jurors were actually biased by the media attention of the case, but based on the jurors’ own explanation, the verdict seems to accurately reflect the weight of the evidence that was presented.

*Emily Morris is a second year law student at Wake Forest University School of Law. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting, with minors in Business Administration and Pre-Law, from Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. Upon graduation, she plans to practice tax and estate planning.