Page 2 of 12 FirstFirst 1234 ... LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 112

Thread: Nidal Malik Hasan - US Military Death Row

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217

    Fort Hood shooting suspect will face death penalty

    FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - -- The Army psychiatrist charged in the deadly Fort Hood rampage will be tried in a military court and face the death penalty, the commanding general for the Texas military post announced Wednesday.

    Maj. Nidal Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the November 2009 shooting spree at the Texas Army post.

    It was not immediately clear when Hasan will be arraigned in a Fort Hood courtroom. He must plead not guilty based on the nature of the case, according to military law.

    Hasan's lead attorney, John Galligan, had urged the commanding general not to seek the death penalty, saying such cases were more costly, time-consuming and restrictive. In cases where death is not a punishment option for military jurors, soldiers convicted of capital murder are automatically sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

    "I believe the Army as an institution has long been planning to go this route," Galligan told The Associated Press on Wednesday from his office near Fort Hood, about 125 miles south of Fort Worth.

    Two Army colonels who reviewed the case previously recommended that Hasan be tried in a military court and face the death penalty.

    Galligan has declined to say whether he is considering an insanity defense for his client. He has refused to disclose results of a military mental health panel's evaluation of Hasan but said it would not prevent the military from pursuing a court-martial.

    The three-member panel determined whether Hasan is competent to stand trial and his mental state during the shootings. It also determined if he had a severe mental illness that day, and if so, whether such a condition prevented him from knowing at the time that his alleged actions were wrong.

    Hasan was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by police the day of the rampage. He remains jailed in the Bell County Jail, which houses defendants for nearby Fort Hood.

    Hasan has attended several brief court hearings and an evidentiary hearing last fall that lasted about two weeks. He sometimes took notes and showed no reaction as 56 witnesses testified, including more than two dozen soldiers who survived gunshot wounds.

    Witnesses testified that a gunman wearing an Army combat uniform shouted "Allahu Akbar!" - which is Arabic for "God is great!" - and started shooting in a small but crowded medical building where deploying soldiers get vaccines and other tests. The gunman fired rapidly, pausing only to reload, even shooting some people as they hid under tables or fled the building, witnesses said. He fatally shot two people who tried to stop him by throwing chairs, and killed three soldiers who were protecting civilian nurses, according to testimony.

    The gunman was identified as Hasan, an American-born Muslim who was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan the following month. Before the attack, Hasan bought a laser-equipped semiautomatic handgun and repeatedly visited a firing range, where he honed his skills by shooting at the heads on silhouette targets, witnesses testified during the hearing.

    http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...rld&id=8234527

  2. #12
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Fort Hoot suspect's arraignment set for next week

    FORT HOOD, Texas — The Army psychiatrist charged in the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military installation will be arraigned in a military court next week.

    It will be Maj. Nidal Hasan's first court appearance since Fort Hood's commander decided he would face the death penalty.

    Defense attorney John Galligan declined to say whether Hasan will enter a plea when he's arraigned Wednesday in a Fort Hood courtroom. Military law says suspects charged in death-penalty cases are not allowed to plead guilty.

    Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the November 2009 rampage.

    Galligan told The Associated Press Friday that the military judge also will set Hasan's trial date, possibly as early as March.

    Jurors will be brought in from Fort Sill, Okla.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...#ixzz1SBpJdSor

  3. #13
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Suspect Is Arraigned in Fort Hood Massacre

    FORT HOOD, Tex. — Wearing a camouflage Army uniform and sitting upright in a wheelchair, the military psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in a shooting rampage here appeared in court on Wednesday at his arraignment, without the civilian lawyer who had been his lead defense attorney.

    The Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, informed the judge shortly before the arraignment on Wednesday that he had released the lawyer and would be represented by military lawyers from the United States Army Trial Defense Service who had already been working on his case. At the arraignment, the judge, Col. Gregory Gross, asked Major Hasan if his decision to remove the civilian lawyer was a voluntary act.

    “Yes, it is,” Major Hasan responded quietly.

    Major Hasan’s arraignment came one year and eight months after the November 2009 attack, one of the deadliest mass shootings to ever unfold at an American military base. Major Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.

    The arraignment was a brief proceeding held in a wood-paneled Fort Hood courtroom. Colonel Gross set the trial date for next March 5.

    Throughout the session, Major Hasan sat in a wheelchair facing the judge, appearing calm and occasionally lightly rubbing his chin. He entered the courtroom wearing a loose-fitting green fleece cap, but took it off before Colonel Gross entered the room.

    It was the first time that Major Hasan had appeared in court since a pretrial hearing that spanned several weeks concluded in November. That pretrial hearing, known as an Article 32 hearing, is roughly equivalent to a civilian grand jury proceeding. At the end of that hearing, which was held in the same Fort Hood courtroom as the arraignment, two Army colonels recommended that Major Hasan stand trial and face the death penalty, and the commanding general of Fort Hood, Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr., agreed.

    It was unclear why Major Hasan changed his defense team. The civilian defense lawyer, John P. Galligan, is a retired Army colonel and military judge. In an interview last week, Mr. Galligan said he did not believe that his client could receive a fair trial at the base. Mr. Galligan did not respond to phone and e-mail messages on Wednesday. Major Hasan’s lawyers from the United States Army Trial Defense Service are provided at no cost to him.

    If convicted, Major Hasan will join a handful of other men on the military’s death row, at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Although the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment in the military in 1996, military executions are rare. The last time the military carried out a death penalty sentence was on April 13, 1961, when John A. Bennett, a 26-year-old Army private convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old Austrian girl, was hanged at Fort Leavenworth.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/us/21hood.html

  4. #14
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Judge to Hear Defense Motions in Fort Hood Case

    FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - A military judge has set a hearing for this week to consider defense motions for an Army psychiatrist charged in the Fort Hood shooting rampage.

    Maj. Nidal Hasan is expected to be in court for Thursday's hearing at Fort Hood.

    Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the November 2009 shootings.

    The judge, Col. Gregory Gross, will consider two defense motions seeking certain expert witnesses for Hasan's case.

    Thursday's hearing will be the first since Hasan was arraigned in July. He hasn't yet entered a plea.

    Hasan faces the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole if convicted at his military trial set to begin in March at the Central Texas Army post.

    http://www.cbs7kosa.com/news/details.asp?ID=29825

  5. #15
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    83 plaintiffs join in on Hood victims lawsuit

    The Army, the Defense Department, the FBI and the Department of Justice should have stopped Maj. Nidal Hasan before his deadly shooting rampage in 2009, according to legal action filed by the relatives of his victims.

    Eighty-three plaintiffs, including victims and relatives of victims of the attacks at Fort Hood, Texas, seek $750 million in government compensation and have filed an administrative claim against the Army, said their attorney, Neal Sher.

    The claim alleges government agencies were guilty of “gross and willful negligence and wanton disregard for the safety of military and civilian personnel,” Sher said in a press release. The government promoted Hasan instead of heeding “warning signs that Hasan posed a grave danger to the lives and safety of soldiers and civilians.”

    Fort Hood spokesman Christopher Haug said the Army was legally barred from commenting on the pending civil claims and the criminal case against Hasan.

    Hasan, an Army psychiatrist and American-born Muslim, faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. He is awaiting trial.

    Fifty-four relatives of eight of the slain soldiers have filed claims. One civilian police officer and nine of the injured soldiers have filed claims along with 19 family members of those 10. Among the claimants is a civilian police officer who shot Hasan, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was hit in the leg and hand in an exchange of gunfire. She underwent a series of surgeries for her wounds and is on unpaid leave from her post as a civilian police officer with the Army.

    Munley and her police partner, Sgt. Mark Todd, are credited with shooting Hasan.

    A Senate report on the attack, which is cited in the claim, called Hasan a “ticking time bomb” who — as he embraced violent Islamic extremism — shared his anti-American views with Army colleagues and should have been disciplined, discharged or referred to counterterrorism officials.

    The claim, filed with the Army Claims Service, is a precursor to a lawsuit. The Army has six months to deny or satisfactorily resolve the claim before the case can be moved to federal court.

    The claim has several legal hurdles to overcome, said Richard Rosen, a professor at Texas Tech University School of Law and a retired Army colonel. The government might invoke the Feres doctrine, which effectively bars service members and their relatives from collecting damages from the government for line-of-duty injuries.

    For civilians, the government might invoke a “discretionary function” defense, which essentially shields government agencies from liability when carrying out their prescribed duties. “I don’t think they can sue unless Feres is reinterpreted here,” Rosen said.

    http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/1...tiffs-112511w/

  6. #16
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Judge rejects accused Fort Hood gunman's request to step aside

    Defense attorneys for Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, asked a military judge Wednesday to remove himself from the case.

    Hasan, who's confined to a wheelchair because of injuries he suffered in a shootout with Fort Hood police officers, was present during the hearing Wednesday morning.

    Hasan's attorneys argued that because Col. Gregory Gross was on post on the day of the shootings, there could be an appearance of bias.

    Gross heard arguments on the request, called an hour-long recess, and then denied the recusal motion

    He said he's tried to distance himself from the rampage.

    "If I saw anything about 5-November, I deleted those e-mails," he said.

    Hasan's attorneys also questioned whether the military's capital procedures are consistent with constitutional requirements of due process and equal protection.

    Prosecutors countered that there is a mechanism in place by which a death sentence can be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and said that the panel that will decide the case will take aggravating factors into consideration.

    Gross didn't rule on the issue.

    Hasan faces the possibility of a life sentence without parole or the death penalty if he's convicted in the worst shooting in history on a U.S. military installation.

    He's charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the rampage at Fort Hood's Soldier Readiness Center.

    Hasan last appeared in court on Oct. 27 for a hearing during which defense motions were filed seeking funds for a jury expert and media consultant.

    Rulings are still pending on both of those motions.

    His court-martial is scheduled to begin in March.

    http://www.cbs19.tv/story/16157596/j...-to-step-aside

  7. #17
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Ft. Hood slaying suspect seeks trial delay

    Lawyers representing the U.S. Army psychiatrist charged in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, said they plan to seek a delay in his court-martial.

    Lt. Col. Kris Poppe, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan's lead attorney, said the request expected to be made Thursday in a hearing is "purely a matter of necessity" so the defense has adequate time for pre-trial preparation, CNN reported.

    Hasan is charged with killing 13 people and wounding dozens more in the shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2009.

    His court-martial, in which prosecutors will seek the death penalty, is scheduled to begin March 5.

    Hasan has not entered a plea.

    http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/...#ixzz1lEx0OFqm

  8. #18
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Judge, Col. Gregory Gross, granted a three-month delay.

    http://fremonttribune.com/news/natio...7b6d0e157.html

  9. #19
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Missouri
    Posts
    1,277
    Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down right? What prison is he held at? I take it he must be in solitary.

  10. #20
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Bell County jail in Belton Texas. It's near Fort Hood.

Page 2 of 12 FirstFirst 1234 ... LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •