http://www.truthout.org/article/iraq-put-his-life-trigger
Cody Morris and Casey Hall were best friends who returned from the
war with a passion for playing with guns. When their fun turned
fatal, was it an accident or murder?
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 24, 2008
BARDWELL, KY. -- When Cody Alexander Morris returned from the war
last fall, he carried home a burden -- a diagnosis of post-traumatic
stress disorder -- and a new way of playing with guns.
The gun game was called "Do You Trust Me?" Morris, 19, learned it
from his Kentucky National Guard buddies in Iraq.
He taught the game to his roommates: best friend and fellow guardsman
Casey Lee Hall, 18, and a 16-year-old cousin, Cory Adams. The young
men would point unloaded handguns at each other's heads, ask "Do you
trust me?" and pull the trigger.
Sometimes the guns came out while the teenagers drank alcohol, smoked
marijuana and played violent video games. They called each other CWB,
for "crazy white boy," and had those three words tattooed on their necks.
"It fit us pretty good," Morris said recently, "'cause we are crazy
white boys. We were potheads -- we'd just drink and smoke . . . and
play-fight."
But the carousing masked Morris' troubled state. His PTSD was so
severe, his friends said, that he couldn't sleep. He had terrifying
visions of people he had killed in combat.
Morris showed his friends horrific photos from Iraq -- "people with
their heads blowed off . . . guts ripped out on barbed wire . . .
bullet holes in every piece of body," said a friend, Dustin Newton.
Sometimes, friends said, Morris would show the photos and laugh.
At night, Morris slept with a loaded 9-millimeter Ruger semiautomatic
handgun under his mattress. His mother bought the gun for him because
he was two years shy of being able to buy it legally.
That gun was in Morris' hand when it went off on the night of Oct.
18, killing Hall with a perfectly placed shot between his eyes.
Cody Morris is small and nimble -- 5 foot 6 and 140 pounds. He refers
to himself as "not a real smart guy." He has a severe learning
disability and reads below the eighth-grade level. He failed fourth
grade and repeated ninth grade before dropping out.
At 15, he was sent to a military-themed reform school for standing
lookout while a friend robbed a store. He was 17 when he earned a GED.
Morris remembers a turbulent upbringing in Bardwell, where he lived
in a trailer with a blended family. (He has a sister, two
half-sisters, two half-brothers and three stepsisters.) One
Christmas, he said, his stepfather smashed the gifts under the tree
and wrote "slut" on a wall with Miracle Whip after a fight with Morris' mother.
Morris was eager to leave Bardwell, population 793, a speck in the
road in far-western rural Kentucky, the county seat in a county with
just one stoplight. Two prominent features downtown are a large
Confederate flag and a "God Bless Our Troops" sign.
Morris decided to follow his older sister, Larissa Roach, into the
Guard. He was underage, so his mother signed him up.
"I wanted him out of this town," said his mother, Bonnie Fernandez,
citing a lack of opportunities.
Morris persuaded Hall -- his best friend since fourth grade -- to
join the Guard with him. Hall's mother enlisted him two days before
he turned 17.
Morris seemed to find a home in the military, with its codes of honor
and discipline. In October 2006, he was sent to war. He turned 18 the
day he landed in Iraq.
Morris said his base near Baghdad was attacked almost daily. He
described shooting an insurgent in the chest and seeing his face as
he died. He spoke of seeing bodies floating in a canal and stepping
on human brains during a house raid.
His team leader noticed disturbing changes in his personality and
persuaded him to see a military psychiatrist, who diagnosed PTSD, Morris said.
"She cracked me open," he said. "I let it all out. I was crying. I
had been holding it all in. . . . She really helped me."
About 300,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed
with PTSD or major depression, a Rand Corp. study found. Only a small
percentage have committed violent crimes. The veterans receive
various levels of treatment -- or no treatment at all in half the
cases, according to Rand.
Back home, Morris stopped taking the sedative prescribed in Iraq. He
was not seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist. He passed the time
getting high, showing off his gun and playing video games.
Morris said he heard screams in his sleep and suffered flashbacks
that made him feel he was "fixing to die." He was afraid to ride in
cars because he thought other drivers were plotting to ram him with
explosives. He avoided soda cans because opening them produced a
fizzy noise that sounded like a bullet passing overhead.
Even so, he told people he was leaving soon for Ft. Benning, Ga., to
apply for Special Forces training. He said he wanted to return to Iraq.
He loved the military, and he loved his gun; he said it felt natural
to carry it for protection. "Your weapon is your body," he told
police. Gordon Williams, a psychologist who later examined Morris,
said the gun had become "part of his persona."
Once, Adams said, he and Morris were horsing around when the gun went
off, putting a slug in a wall. Another time, according to Matt
Turnbow, 19, a casual acquaintance, Morris put the barrel of his
unloaded gun into another friend's mouth and pulled the trigger.
Adams, who idolized his cousin, wanted a gun to play with too. He
stole a 9-millimeter handgun from a car last fall, he told police. On
Oct. 18, two weeks after Morris came home, he and Adams -- along with
Hall and Turnbow -- were smoking dope and playing Call of Duty, a
video game. As usual, Morris and Adams brandished their guns. What
happened next that evening has been in dispute. During questioning by
police, Morris said Hall had fired the shot that ripped through his
brain. Then Morris stopped talking. "He just picked out a spot and
stared at it like we wasn't there," Carlisle County Sheriff Steve
McChristian said.
Morris was charged with wanton murder and jailed; he faced up to 50
years in prison.
In December, an arsonist burned down the county courthouse in
Bardwell, where some evidence in the murder case was stored. Cody's
father, Larry Morris, was questioned and his home searched, the
sheriff said. The elder Morris was not charged, pending further
investigation. But police did jail him on charges of intimidating a
witness: Turnbow.
Mark Bryant, a prominent lawyer in nearby Paducah and a former state
prosecutor, was hired to defend Cody Morris. Bryant has a
swashbuckling courtroom style and a soothing twang that charms
juries. He argued that the shooting was a terrible accident caused
when Adams tried to wrestle the gun from Morris. The situation was
exacerbated by Morris' PTSD, he said.
"Cody came back from Iraq a totally different person,"
psychologically damaged by killing and brutality, Bryant told a jury
earlier this month in a makeshift courtroom at the Bardwell Masonic Lodge.
The prosecutor, Mike Stacy, dismissed the PTSD talk. Stacy reminded
the jury that he himself had grown up in Bardwell, where people, he
said, rely on their common sense. Clearly, Morris -- not PTSD -- was
responsible for his actions, Stacy said. Heintentionally killed his
best friend during an argument, he said.
"He got mad and grabbed that gun and shot that boy between the eyes,"
Stacy said.
The teenagers who witnessed the shooting confessed that at first they
had told the sheriff a rehearsed lie about Hall committing suicide.
Their story unraveled later that night when Turnbow called Hall's
mother, and then the police, to say that Hall had been shot by
Morris. Morris had placed the gun in Hall's hand as his best friend
lay dying, the teens ultimately told police.
Turnbow, a shambling, unkempt young man who had known Morris for only
two weeks, became the prosecutor's key witness. But Turnbow gave
contradictory statements to police and offered shifting accounts on
the witness stand.
He told the sheriff in a written statement: "Because it was an
accident, Cody would go to jail for a long time for something he
didn't mean to do."
In court, Turnbow said Morris shot his best friend on purpose after
Hall addressed Morris by a racial slur for blacks. Friends said the
teenagers, though white, sometimes used the slur as a grave insult.
Turnbow denied to defense attorney Bryant that he ever told the
police the shooting was an accident. Bryant was incredulous --
Turnbow's statements to the police were right in front of him. He
suggested Turnbow was high on marijuana. "I think the guy's messed up
right now!" he told the judge.
In his testimony, Adams acknowledged lunging for Morris' gun but
denied that he touched the weapon. Adams said the shooting was an
accident. But he also said Morris and Hall had argued over whether
blacks and whites belonged to the same species.
One intriguing bit of testimony in the two-day trial came from a
medical examiner, who noted that the fatal shot struck "right between
the eyebrows" -- a highly unlikely bullet path for an accidental
shot, she said.
Prosecutor Stacy drove home the point, showing the jurors a color
photograph of Hall's face with the fatal wound.
Bryant countered with testimony from Williams, the psychologist, who
has counseled thousands of veterans with PTSD. Williams said he had
examined Morris for 90 minutes and concluded that he had PTSD and was
"in severe distress."
Bryant put Morris on the witness stand.
He wore his military dress green uniform with his Iraq campaign
ribbon. Morris told the jury that Adams had pointed a loaded
9-millimeter handgun at Hall earlier that evening, prompting Hall to
take the clip.
Hall asked Morris for his gun, possibly intending to point it at
Adams after Adams demanded his clip back.
He offered Hall the gun, Morris said, holding it by the rear slide,
his finger away from the trigger. Adams lunged for the weapon, he
said, and it discharged.
Under cross-examination, Stacy asked Morris how Adams could have put
his finger on the trigger and hit Hall perfectly between the eyes if
the two cousins were wrestling over it.
Morris shrugged: "It's true."
If Morris was so traumatized by death and violence in Iraq, Stacy
asked, why did he play video games that required him to kill
imaginary characters? Did he have a good time playing?
Morris hesitated. "Yes, sir."
If Iraq caused his PTSD, Stacy asked, why was Morris so eager to go back?
"I would rather myself go to combat if it has to be done," Morris
answered. "I know the job."
The jury was instructed to decide among three charges -- wanton
murder, second-degree manslaughter or reckless homicide -- plus a
separate charge of tampering with evidence for staging the gun in Hall's hand.
After deliberating just over two hours, the six men and six women
decided on the least of the charges, reckless homicide. They also
found Morris guilty of tampering with evidence. Both charges carry
prison sentences of one to five years.
Morris stared straight ahead, his palms on his thighs.
In the courtroom gallery, police kept watch over Morris' and Hall's
friends and family members. There had been rumors of threats and
confrontations.
Morris, smoking a cigarette outside while the jury deliberated his
sentencing, said he understood the Hall family's anguish. "They may
all hate me," he said, "but I still love them."
Vicky Payne, Hall's mother, sat in a car, weeping. Hall's stepfather,
Rollie Payne, cursed Morris. "We'll never get past this," Payne said,
biting off the words. "There is no closure because there is no justice."
Three hours later, the jury recommended maximum sentences of five
years on each count, to be served consecutively. When Morris' mother
heard the sentences, she let out a sharp cry and buried her face in
her hands. Bryant patted her shoulder. Counting time served awaiting
trial, Bryant told her, Morris would be eligible for parole in less
than two years. Morris watched, impassive.
Afterward, Stacy said that although the defense had portrayed Morris
as both a PTSD victim and a war hero, he did not think the jurors had
bought into that. "I know war heroes," Stacy said, "and Cody Morris
is no war hero."
Before the sentencing, as Morris smoked outside, he said it didn't
really matter if he went to prison, or for how long. He still planned
to figure out a way to get back to Iraq.
--
david.zucchino@latimes.com
Zucchino was on assignment in Kentucky early this month.
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