'American Sniper' jurors speak out about Eddie Ray Routh guilty verdict
The jurors who found Eddie Ray Routh guilty of killing Chris Kyle and Kyle's friend Chad Littlefield said that they are absolutely convinced that Routh knew what he was doing.
"Without a doubt, he knew the consequences of pulling the trigger," juror Barrett Hutchinson said.
Six of the jurors involved in the guilty verdict appeared on "Good Morning America" Wednesday.
Routh, a former Marine, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jurors were not convinced.
"I know a lot of us came into this jury questioning that, but evidence shows that there was a definite pattern there," juror Kristina Yager said of the plea. "He would get intoxicated, get in trouble and then the police would show up and he would say, 'I'm a veteran. I have PTSD. I'm insane.' Every time something bad happened, he'd pull that card."
Texas law states that a person can still be found guilty even if they are insane as long as they know the difference between right and wrong.
Still the jurors, 12 of them in all, had to decide whether Routh was guilty, not guilty, or not guilty by reason of insanity. They had little trouble agreeing on the guilty verdict, they said, but still went over the facts that led them to that consensus, they said. It took them about two and a half hours.
Hutchinson told GMA he had seen "American Sniper," the film based on Kyle's work as a Navy SEAL sniper, but that it did not influence his decision because it does not feature Routh.
"It gave me a better outlook on Chris' role," said on juror. He said he "looked at him as a person, looked at Chad as a person, looked at Eddie as a person."
Routh will spend the rest of his life in prison for the two murders.
