FORT LEWIS – Military attorneys on Thursday repeatedly objected to evidence and witness testimony in the case of a soldier accused of brutally mutilating his wife, bringing to a crawl a murder trial that was expected to last five days.
The government in the past four days has presented more than 10 witnesses, including evidence specialists, family and mental health workers, as its builds its case against Spc. Brandon Bare, accused in the death of Nabila Bare, 18.
The young woman was found in the couple’s kitchen on July 12, stabbed at least 71 times and with a pentagram carved into her stomach. Bare, 20, of Wilkesboro, N.C., is charged with premeditated murder and faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors contend Bare planned to kill his wife and scanned Web sites for examples of pentagrams. On Thursday, the government attempted to show a military jury Internet sites it said he visited before the killing in search of such diagrams.
Defense attorney Capt. Patrick O’Brien argued that the evidence didn’t provide complete information of what the computer user was doing. “It’s just a snapshot,” he said.
Army Judge Col. Mark Toole agreed that the evidence was not relevant and rejected it.
Lead prosecutor Capt. Scott DiRocco was allowed to submit what the government says was Bare’s page on MySpace.com, a social networking Web site where users can chat with friends and list their interests.
The page lists serial killers Richard Ramirez and Charles Manson as people the user would like to meet.
In interviews with investigators, Bare said he had thought about strangling his wife, and had thought of Ramirez, the Los Angeles “Night Stalker” convicted of 13 murders.
Army special agent Patrick Rasmussen testified that only a person with Bare’s user name and password would have been able to enter information under his MySpace profile. Bare apparently last visited the site July 11, one day before the killing.
The panel also heard testimony from Nabila Bare’s best friend, Jennifer Pearce, who said the young woman had begun considering divorce in April 2005. Her friend would call her twice a week, Pearce said, usually after a fight with her husband.
“She’d get really mad at him, call me up and tell me how she wanted a divorce,” Pearce said.
In mid-May, Nabila Bare picked up divorce papers from the legal office on the post, but she never completed them, Pearce testified.
The trial was expected to end today, but the defense has yet to present its case.
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