Lawyer Has 'Emotional' Talk With Accused Afghan Killer

Staff Sgt Robert Bales' new layer met with him at Fort Leavenworth today and described the encounter as "emotional," the BBC reports. "What's going on on the ground in Afghanistan, you read about it, I read about it, but it's totally different when you hear about it from somebody who's been there," said John Henry Browne, who has represented such flashy clients as serial killer Ted Bundy and the teenage robber dubbed the Barefoot Bandit.

Browne's team had said it was "too early" to know what "may have played into this incident"—the alleged mass murder of 16 Afghan civilians. But a former Army doctor gave Bloomberg a possible preview of trial testimony: “It is PTSD plus something,” he said. “To kill innocent women and children indicates to me that something happened during these killings that was simply more than the product of PTSD." One thing that may have been bugging the Army sniper: his Washington-state home, which was in default and about to sell for $50,000 less than what he and his wife had paid for it. (More Robert Bales stories.)