http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/us/fort-hood-suspects-legal-team-asks-to-be-removed.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 10:17 AM
Subject: re: Lawyer Says Fort Hood Defendant’s Goal Is Death
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   If Nidal Malik Hasan is seeking death, it is explicable that he is laying out the case that he has adhered to our enemies. What remains to be explained is why the Federal Prosecutor demurs to call this treason. That's the definition by the book (or rather by Article III of the U.S. Constitution). Instead, he has characterize the Fort Hood shootings as "workplace violence".
   I don't know what a guy's gotta do to make a political statement around here. Sometimes it seems the only recognized form of political expression is to give ever-more money to professional politicians.

Barry Haskell Levine

Find more of my (largely one-sided) correspondence with the New York Times at:
htt://forgottencenter.blogspot.com/
Or write a letter of your own. Democracy only works when we engage in
the issues of our day

Lawyer Says Fort Hood Defendant’s Goal Is Death

Brigitte Woosley/Associated Press

A sketch of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, right, with his former lead defense lawyer, Lt. Col. Kris R. Poppe, center, who said Wednesday that the major’s aim was to receive the death sentence, and that helping him violated ethics.

By MANNY FERNANDEZ

Published: August 7, 2013

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KILLEEN, Tex. — On the first day of his military trial on Tuesday, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan told jurors that he was the gunman responsible for a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base here in 2009 and that the semiautomatic handgun displayed by prosecutors was in fact his weapon. Major Hasan, who is representing himself after releasing his Army defense lawyers, asked only a handful of questions of the prosecution’s 12 witnesses, declining to cross-examine most of them.

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At the start of the second day of the trial, on Wednesday, Major Hasan’s former lead Army defense lawyer, who sits by his side in the courtroom as his standby counsel, told the judge that Major Hasan’s goal was to receive a death sentence, and that helping him achieve that goal violated his ethical obligations.

“His goal is to remove impediments or obstacles to the death penalty and is in fact encouraging or working toward the death penalty,” said the lawyer, Lt. Col. Kris R. Poppe.

Colonel Poppe filed a motion asking the judge to modify the role of Major Hasan’s Army defense team. The colonel and two other Army defense lawyers assist Major Hasan in a limited capacity, guiding him through the mechanics of military law but offering no advice on his defense strategies. He asked the judge to change their role, and that of the Army paralegals who help Major Hasan, so that they are no longer required to provide any assistance to Major Hasan.

He said that aiding him even in a rudimentary way would assist Major Hasan’s goals, “which we believe are working in concert with the prosecution in achieving a death sentence.” He added, “That we cannot do.”

The request caused the judge to order a recess until Thursday morning. The judge, Col. Tara A. Osborn, asked Colonel Poppe why he was making the request now. He said that Major Hasan’s opening statement, as well as his conduct during jury selection — in which Major Hasan asked few prospective jurors questions — crystallized the issue and forced him to file the motion.

“This has got to be torture, particularly if you’re opposed to capital punishment,” Geoffrey S. Corn, a former Army prosecutor who is a professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, said of the defense team.

“Any lawyer who’s dismissed by his client and ordered to stay on the case as a standby counsel, it is probably one of the hardest things imaginable for a lawyer to do,” he said. “You have to sit there and watch your client make what you know are potentially mortal mistakes, and that’s agonizing.”

Major Hasan has been charged with killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others in the attack on Nov. 5, 2009. If convicted, he faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole. For months, the judge and the former legal team have struggled with the lawyers’ role as standby counsel. Major Hasan asked the judge in May to allow him to release his lawyers. The judge granted the request but ordered the lawyers to remain his standby counsel.

The lawyers had worked on his case for three years and had not only helped Major Hasan keep his beard — which became a focus of his pretrial hearings — but also persuaded a military appeals court to remove the previous judge because of an appearance of bias.

Colonel Poppe’s motion was not a request to withdraw from the case. He told the judge on Wednesday that the lawyers stand ready to resume their defense of Major Hasan should he change his mind about representing himself and request that they return, or if the court ordered them to return.

Major Hasan, who sat next to Colonel Poppe as he spoke, said he disagreed with the colonel. “That’s a twist of the facts,” Major Hasan said of Colonel Poppe’s statement that he was seeking the death penalty. Major Hasan wanted to elaborate, but the judge prevented him from doing so, asking that the courtroom be cleared. She held a closed session with Major Hasan and his standby counsel before deciding to call a recess until Thursday.

It remained unclear why Major Hasan chose to split from his lawyers and why he wanted to represent himself. He has become the only defendant in recent history to represent himself in a military capital-punishment case, raising potential appellate-court issues if he is convicted and sentenced to death.

Prosecutors and the testimony of witnesses suggested that Major Hasan did not expect to survive the shooting rampage. The morning of the attack, he told people at the Killeen Islamic Center that he was going away and bid them farewell.

Colonel Poppe’s request posed several problems for the judge. She said the motion and documents submitted with it appeared to contain privileged information between Major Hasan and a jury consultant. The material was submitted to the prosecution, but the judge ordered the materials sealed and instructed prosecutors to return them to her immediately.

Military law experts said releasing privileged information to the prosecution raised the prospect of a mistrial, though they said it was unlikely that Colonel Osborn would declare one. The Army’s lead prosecutor, Col. Michael Mulligan, told the judge that he read the motion but that neither he nor the other prosecutors looked at the enclosures.

The judge asked Major Hasan if he wished to release the information regarding jury selection, and he replied that he did not. The jury consultant, Jeffrey Frederick, was to help Major Hasan select a jury, but he was not present during selection. Rather, he was at Fort Bragg on another case.

The judge had offered to delay jury selection so Mr. Frederick could be there, but Major Hasan declined, according to The San Antonio Express-News
.