this has been dubbed the american sniper trial, and that is not accurate. two people lost their lives that day. they were husbands they were fathers, they were sons. and that really struck me. because frankly, at times during this trial there were points when it seemed like all of the attention was on chris kyle, because of who he was. and he was hard to sit there and watch chad littlefield s parents sobbing, when they flashed pictures of their dead son up on the autopsy table. and with a bullet wound in his face. and they sobbed because it seems as if chris kyle got most of the attention during this. that s why this was a capital murder case, by the way, because in texas the definition is if there are two people killed within the same crime. and that s what obviously this was. that s what eddie routh has now been convicted of here tonight. and that is why they only had
is. they really don t know who chad littlefield is but chris kyle was the man who was the focus of the american sniper book the blockbuster movie but no one has heard from eddie ray routh until now. so this jury was able to watch his demeanor watch how he talked about things and that by far was the most powerful testimony in evidence that the prosecution had in this case. ed when many people especially in other countries around the world, they hear life in prison, they think it s a set term. maybe 25 30 years. but in this case life means life. there s no possibility the sentence could be reviewed. he will die in jail. reporter: right. the way this works out, because he killed two people that makes it a capital offense in texas. he was actually eligible for the death penalty, because it was a capital murder case. a few months ago, prosecutors decided to take the death penalty off the table, which means in a capital case the
district court judge. anything surprise you here? i was surprised at how quick the verdict came back. honestly. i thought that it would probably go over into the next day. but you never know what a jury will do. they can come back in five minutes or six hours or over a day or they can hang up. you never know. that s up to the 12 ladies and gentlemen who make the decision in the case. help us understand this here if you can, michael. that is mandatory sentencing. is that common? how have you dealt with that in the past when you ve had to run cases like this? it s a statutory mandate in the state of texas and throughout many of the states. essentially it is this. if a case is a capital murder case, then the state has the option of doing two things.
do justice, not about getting convictions but what is just and rite. and when you have a case, a capital murder case, and you re depending upon a detective because the detective is saying she confessed and i ll tell you what she said and in addition to that, forget about the fact she didn t write it down or wasn t recorded, there s no independent eyewitness who was a police officer who was there. when it s your word against the other persons and you have this egregious misconduct on the part of the detective and you don t disclose it to the defense, it s a major what we call brady violation. what does that mean in english? it means if there s information that would tend to support the accused, that would tend to show the accused is innocent it must be turned over. not only, randi, did they not turn over the offenses of this detective that would have gone to his credibility, the very core of this case, but when the defense attorney tried to affirmatively get it through a subpoena, they
motorist with a faulty taillight go in exchange for sex, then lied to his superiors about it. the judge determined this would likely have cast doubt on detective saldate s credibility and may have influenced the verdict. it s still a fact that she was convicted of the murder of her four-year-old son. on friday, september 6, 23 years after she was sent to death row, debra milky walked out of prison a free woman. for now. she was finally able to hug her mother for the first time in more than 20 years. now 49, milky is preparing for yet another trial, but this time around things may be different. a judge will soon decide if her alleged confession is even admissible in court and detective saldate? he may ask for immunity and not testify. they don t have saldate to testify and if they don t have a confession this case has to be dismissed? which means debra milky may