Staff Sergeant Robert Bales to withdraw guilty plea

U.S. soldier in Afghan murder trial declines to withdraw guilty plea
By Jonathan Kaminsky
TACOMA, Washington
Tue Aug 20, 2013

Bales' attorneys said they would argue that post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury were factors in the killings.

(Reuters) - A U.S. army soldier who in June admitted the slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians declined to withdraw his guilty plea in a military court on Monday.

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales made his decision in advance of legal arguments set to begin Tuesday that will determine whether his life sentence will come with the possibility of parole.

"I'm just trying to do the right thing," he said in a hearing Monday to establish ground rules for the roughly week-long sentencing proceedings.

The judge, Army Colonel Jeffery Nance, asked Bales whether he wanted to withdraw the guilty plea in light of possible misinformation about the length of time before he could be eligible for parole.

Under a plea agreement that accompanied the plea, Bales will be spared the death penalty and could be eligible for parole after 20 years, less time already served and credit for good behavior.

Bales pleaded guilty in June to walking off his base in Afghanistan's Kandahar province before dawn on March 11, 2012, and killing 16 unarmed civilians, most of them women and children, in attacks on their family compounds.
read more here

Also from April

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales Defense Must Decide Strategy His lawyers have said for the past year that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and combat-related head injuries, suggesting those ailments overcame him on what was his fourth combat deployment from Lewis-McChord since 2003.

The News Tribune has this report from yesterday

Army: Bales, wife laughed about killing charges
Published: August 19, 2013

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WASH. — Army prosecutors said Monday they have a recording of a phone call in which Staff Sgt. Robert Bales and his wife laugh as they review the charges filed against him in the killing of 16 Afghan villagers.

Bales, an Ohio native and father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty for killing the civilians, mostly women and children, on March 11, 2012.

His sentencing begins on Tuesday with the selection of a military jury. Prosecutors told the judge, Col. Jeffery Nance, on Monday they hope to play the recording, among others, to show a lack of remorse on Bales' part. He faces life in prison either with or without the possibility of release

Bales, on his fourth combat deployment, had been drinking and watching a movie with other soldiers at his remote post at Camp Belambay in Kandahar Province when he slipped away before dawn on March 11, 2012. Bales said he had also been taking steroids and snorting Valium.

Armed with a 9 mm pistol and an M-4 rifle, he attacked a village of mud-walled compounds called Alkozai then returned and woke up a fellow soldier to tell him about it. The soldier didn't believe Bales and went back to sleep. Bales left again to attack a second village known as Najiban.
read more here