Life sentence for killer in ‘Sniper’ case

‘You took the lives of 2 ... that tried to be a friend to you.’

STEPHENVILLE, TEXAS — Eddie Ray Routh was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Tuesday after a Texas jury found him guilty of murdering Chris Kyle, the former U.S. Navy SEAL whose autobiography was turned into the hit movie “American Sniper.”

Routh, 27, a former U.S. Marine, was found guilty of fatally shooting Kyle and Kyle’s friend, Chad Littlefield, multiple times at a gun range about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth in February 2013. Prosecutors said he ambushed the two from the rear, waiting for Kyle to unload his weapon at the range before he attacked with a barrage of gunshots.

Kyle, a former ranch hand turned SEAL who was credited with the most confirmed kills of any U.S. military sniper, has been lionized in his home state of Texas. He became entrenched in U.S. popular culture, in large part due to his best- selling book and the Academy Award-nominated movie directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper.

After leaving military service, Kyle, who battled his own mental demons, helped counsel troubled veterans with talks and shooting-range visits. He, along with Littlefield, a neighbor, had driven Routh to the range.

“You took the lives of two heroes, men that tried to be a friend to you. You became an American disgrace,” Littlefield’s brother-in-law, Jerry Richardson, said of Routh at a county court in the rural Texas city of Stephenville after the sentence was handed down.

The jury deliberated for a little more than two hours before reaching a verdict. Prosecutors chose not to seek the death penalty.

Defense lawyers argued that Routh was a paranoid schizophrenic and should be declared innocent by reason of insanity.

Even though Kyle’s autobiography has been criticized for language seen as demeaning to Iraqis and has been on the losing end of a defamation suit brought by former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, Kyle is revered in Stephenville, near where he grew up and went to college. At the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, where Kyle is buried along with other major figures in the state’s history, his grave has been the most visited.

In closing arguments, prosecutor Jane Starnes said Routh acted coldly and deliberately when he gunned down the two and then plotted his escape.

“That is not insanity. That is just cold, calculated capital murder,” Starnes said.

Eddie Ray Routh was found guilty of murdering Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield in 2013. Chris Kyle’s life was dramatized in the film “American Sniper.”