Defendant in Fort Hood Shooting Case Admits Being Gunman

[alp227]

Source: New York Times

KILLEEN, Tex. — Nearly four years after going on a deadly shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base here in 2009, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan told a jury of senior Army officers on Tuesday that “the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.”

In an opening statement that took little more than a minute, Major Hasan, seated in a wheelchair and speaking quietly, said that there was death and destruction on both sides, but that the evidence presented by the prosecution would show only one side.

He said the evidence would show that he fought on the “wrong side,” and then switched sides, and he seemed close to offering an apology for the shooting when he said, “We the mujahedeen are imperfect Muslims” trying to establish a perfect religion. He added, “I apologize for any mistakes I’ve made in this endeavor.” He did not elaborate.

In other statements he has apologized to the Islamic fighters known as the mujahedeen for being part of an Army waging what he described as an immoral war against Muslims. His remarks followed an hourlong opening statement by Col. Steve Hendricks, one of the Army prosecutors, who presented a matter-of-fact yet dramatic retelling of the rampage and how it unfolded.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/us/court-martial-begins-in-fort-hood-killings.html

[MADem]

1. Well, that killer has a fool for a client, defending himself, and good enough for him. nt

[Pterodactyl]

2. FOUR YEARS for a trial for a killer caught red handed at the scene of the crime!

I'm all for due process, but four freakin' years for a case with overwhelming evidence is too long. It delays justice and denies the defendant a right to a speedy trial.

[freshwest]

4. In this case, the defendant did most of the delaying, didn't he? How was he denied a speedy trial?

He's also paralyzed from the waist down which no doubt required a lot of medical procedures and no doubt someone is being required to help him with all his bodily functions, of the kind that I won't mention here.

I don't think he's been denied anything he has asked for, unless he's asked for a medal for killing his fellow soldiers.

All is going just the way Hasan wants it to go. Or did you mean to say that the victims and their families were denied a speedy trial?

I don't see how that can be done within the confines of Due Process. He's not going to be taken out back to be shot or anything like that, no matter how angry anyone is about the time taken. High-profiles cases usually take a long time.

JMHO.

[Pterodactyl]

7. I think the victims and defendants both deserve speedy trials.

The surviving Tsarnaev brother is going to be the same thing. They're going to spend forever figuring out how many lawyers can dance on the head of a pin and it'll go on and on and on.

[freshwest]

8. IAT. That would be nice. But he's not being denied anything, IHMO. It's been Cadillac all the way.

I wasn't that fond of Cadillacs. Just sayin'

[hughee99]

3. What's the protocol here, is he still the "alleged" killer? n/t

[branford]

5. I'm a lawyer, and I would say, "Hell, no!"

[freshwest]

6. Thanks for the update and the link. It answers the question I had about this man:

The prosecution was led by Col. Michael Mulligan, one of the Army’s most aggressive and skillful lawyers. In 2005, he successfully prosecuted Hasan Akbar, an Army sergeant who was convicted and sentenced to death in a grenade attack on his own camp in Kuwait in 2003, though that case remains on appeal.

The article also answered another question I had. The last time the military executed anyone was in 1961, for the rape and attempted murder of an eleven year old girl, which was treated as a capital offense.

And Akbar has not been executed after a decade. I doubt that Hasan will be executed, either. I suspect we will be paying for his caregivers to take care of him the rest of his natural life, which will likely be a very long one.

[EX500rider]

9. Anybody know if he shaved his beard? n/t