Lawyers: Hasan intent on death sentence

Associated Press

FORT HOOD, Texas

On the first day Maj. Nidal Hasan went on trial in a fight for his life, he claimed responsibility for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood. He posed no questions to most witnesses and rarely spoke. On one of the few times he did talk, it was to get on the record that the purported murder weapon was his, even though no one had asked.

The Army psychiatrist sometimes took notes while acting as his own attorney, but he mostly looked forward impassively and rarely asked for help.

By Wednesday, the lawyers ordered to help him said they’d had enough — they couldn’t watch him fulfill a death wish.

“It becomes clear his goal is to remove impediments or obstacles to the death penalty and is working toward a death penalty,” his lead standby attorney, Lt. Col. Kris Poppe, told the judge. That strategy, he argued, “is repugnant to defense counsel and contrary to our professional obligations.”

Poppe said he and the other standby lawyers want to take over the case, or if Hasan is allowed to continue on his own, they want their roles minimized so that Hasan couldn’t ask them for help with a strategy they oppose.

Hasan repeatedly objected, telling the judge: “That’s a twist of the facts.”

The exchange prompted the judge, Col. Tara Osborn, to halt the long-delayed trial on only its second day. She now must decide what to do next, knowing that all moves she makes will be scrutinized by a military justice system that has overturned most soldiers’ death sentences in the past three decades.