John Henry Browne questions evidence against client in Afghan killing case

The lawyer for the Army staff sergeant suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians is questioning the quality of the evidence against his client and trying to paint a different picture of the man accused in the killings.

“I don’t know about the evidence in this case. I don’t know that the government is going to prove much. There’s no forensic evidence. There’s no confessions,” said Attorney John Henry Browne outside his hotel near Fort Leavenworth where his client is being held.

Browne tells KING 5 with the world watching, he thinks the government could be making Staff Sergeant Robert Bales a scapegoat.

“I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Browne.

Browne is planning his own trip to Afghanistan to see what kind of evidence there really is against Bales.

“I’m certainly not saying that we’re not taking responsibility for this in the right way, at the right time. But for now, I’m interested in what the evidence is,” he said. “It’s not like a crime scene in the United States,” said Browne.

Browne met with his client behind bars for the first time Monday to begin building a defense.

On Tuesday, Browne described Bales as “a soldier’s soldier” who followed orders, including deploying to Afghanistan despite not wanting to go. Bales has been reported to have had financial troubles.

The AP reports Bale has a trail of shaky financial dealings, from working in penny-stock boiler rooms that drew numerous client complaints, to an unpaid $1.5 million fraud judgment, to a failed investment partnership with a former high school football teammate.

“That doesn’t mean anything. Sure, there are financial problems. I have financial problems. Ninety-nine percent of America has financial problem,” Browne said. “You don’t go kill women and children because you have financial problems.”

Browne is apparently known for humanizing his clients. A day before the public learned the name of the soldier accused, Browne called a news conference and sketched a different portrait of Robert Bales: that of a loving father and devoted husband who had been traumatized by a comrade’s injury and sent into combat one too many times.

“His best work is not in a court of law, but really in a court of public opinion. He’s a master at humanizing his client, and that’s an important role,” said Dan Satterberg, chief prosecutor in Seattle’s King County.

So far, Browne is doing a good job countering the portrait of Bales that has emerged in leaks from anonymous U.S. officials, said Dan Conway, a former Marine and a military lawyer. But talking so much about his client, for example, saying that Bales remembers little about the attack, is risky, Conway said.

Military investigators have sole access to witnesses in Afghanistan and can start collecting evidence to contradict Browne’s suggestion that the shootings may have been what psychiatrists call a dissociative event.

“You want to humanize your client, but you don’t want to give away the whole playbook,” Conway said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.