Accused Fort Hood shooting spree gunman Major Nidal Hasan asked a U.S. military judge on Wednesday for permission to fire his court-appointed lawyers and represent himself at his court martial, a Fort Hood spokesman said.
The judge, Colonel Tara Osborn, will consider Hasan’s request at a hearing next week. Jury selection, which had been scheduled to begin next week, has been pushed back to June 5, the spokesman said.
Hasan, 42, has been charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 others when he opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood who were preparing to deploy to Iraq in November 2009. He faces a possible death sentence if convicted on the charges.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, is paralyzed from the chest down from gunshots fired by two civilian Fort Hood police officers who ended what was the worst shooting at a U.S. military installation.
He has twice asked that the death penalty be removed so he could plead guilty to the shootings, a request Osborn has refused. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Hasan cannot plead guilty to a capital crime.
Osborn has been trying to get the trial schedule on track after extensive delays while the military justice system debated whether Hasan, who is Muslim, should be required to shave his beard to comply with military rules. Osborn has put that issue aside.
Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Addicott, a former legal adviser to the Army Special Forces and now a law professor at St. Mary’s University in Austin, Texas, said the request was not surprising given that Hasan previously fired civilian lawyers.
Hasan has the right to represent himself, but Osborn can, and probably will, insist that his military attorney, Lieutenant Colonel Kris Poppe remain at the defense table to provide legal advice.
“If he doesn’t want to listen to his lawyer, he doesn’t have to listen to his lawyer,” Addicott said. “But he will not be as competent in raising any type of defense that would have any positive effect on the outcome of his trial.”
Fort Hood is a 340-square-mile (880-square-km) Army post located about 60 miles (100 km) north of Austin.
(Reuters)
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4 Responses
Execute him and bury him in a pig skin
Isn’t it interesting that the Obama Administration took its sweet time to prosecute this case. All the while, this terrorist was collecting his taxpayer provided pay ($278,000) while sitting in jail.
What in the world happened to the U.S.?
Does anyone know whether the US actually transferred Mr. Nasan’s military pay to him, or whether it merely accrued the payment on its books, pending outcome of the trial? Presumably, if convicted, he would be discharged from the army effective the day before the killing spree. Before we jump to any conclusions about the Obama administration’s support of the murders, we ought to have an answer to that question.
#3. He got the money. The article said that the DoD policy is to pay salaries until someone is convicted.
It’s like the Arabs paying the families of suicide bombers.