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"Early in the morning of March 11, 2012, Army staff sergeant Robert Bales left his remote outpost in an impoverished region of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan and killed 16 people in two nearby villages. His victims, mostly women and children, were sleeping at the time. Bales shot or stabbed them to death before dragging some of their bodies into a pile and lighting them on fire.
His crime is as baffling as it is gruesome. In June, he pleaded guilty to the murders in a military court, telling the presiding judge: “There’s not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things I did.”
‘I like to say this drug is like a horror show in a pill.’
In the weeks since his guilty plea, there’s been growing speculation that a drug meant to prevent malaria may have played a role in the murders. In certain circles, including the military, the Peace Corps, and other organizations that send people into malarial zones for long periods of time, the drug – known as mefloquine — has long had a bad reputation for setting nerves on edge and causing nightmares.
In some cases, mefloquine can mess with the mind in more serious ways, causing confusion, hallucinations, and paranoia. On July 29, the FDA added a black box — its strongest warning — to the label of the drug, citing neurological and psychiatric side effects that can last months or years after someone stops taking it.
“I like to say this drug is like a horror show in a pill,” said Remington Nevin, a former Army physician who’s now an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. In a recent paper, Nevin argues that the drug’s effects on the brain and behavior make it likely to become increasingly important in forensic psychiatry."
.....
"The recent FDA announcement, which cites psychiatric side effects lasting months or years, could aid the defense as well, especially if it only has evidence that he took mefloquine during his previous tours in Iraq and can’t prove he was taking it at the time of the crime. “That’s obviously helpful to the defense,” Slobogin said.
“The accused is given considerable leeway during the sentencing phase to present evidence of extenuation and mitigation,” said William Woodruff, a law professor at Campbell University in Raleigh, N.C., and former colonel in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. It seems likely that the court would admit evidence about mefloquine at the sentencing hearing, Woodruff says, but how much weight they would give it is difficult to predict.
On August 19, a military jury will convene to decide Bales’s fate. His guilty plea takes the death penalty off the table. The question is whether his life sentence will include any possibility of parole.
No matter what the jury decides, we will probably never know exactly what role, if any, mefloquine played in this horrific crime. And as long as the drug is in use, it’s unlikely to be the last time we’re left to wonder. "
Although mefloquine has been eyed as a possible contributing factor in previous killings, so far apparently no one has argued successfully in court that the drug made someone less culpable for a crime.
"Early in the morning of March 11, 2012, Army staff sergeant Robert Bales left his remote outpost in an impoverished region of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan and killed 16 people in two nearby villages. His victims, mostly women and children, were sleeping at the time. Bales shot or stabbed them to death before dragging some of their bodies into a pile and lighting them on fire.
His crime is as baffling as it is gruesome. In June, he pleaded guilty to the murders in a military court, telling the presiding judge: “There’s not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things I did.”
‘I like to say this drug is like a horror show in a pill.’
In the weeks since his guilty plea, there’s been growing speculation that a drug meant to prevent malaria may have played a role in the murders. In certain circles, including the military, the Peace Corps, and other organizations that send people into malarial zones for long periods of time, the drug – known as mefloquine — has long had a bad reputation for setting nerves on edge and causing nightmares.
In some cases, mefloquine can mess with the mind in more serious ways, causing confusion, hallucinations, and paranoia. On July 29, the FDA added a black box — its strongest warning — to the label of the drug, citing neurological and psychiatric side effects that can last months or years after someone stops taking it.
“I like to say this drug is like a horror show in a pill,” said Remington Nevin, a former Army physician who’s now an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. In a recent paper, Nevin argues that the drug’s effects on the brain and behavior make it likely to become increasingly important in forensic psychiatry."
.....
"The recent FDA announcement, which cites psychiatric side effects lasting months or years, could aid the defense as well, especially if it only has evidence that he took mefloquine during his previous tours in Iraq and can’t prove he was taking it at the time of the crime. “That’s obviously helpful to the defense,” Slobogin said.
“The accused is given considerable leeway during the sentencing phase to present evidence of extenuation and mitigation,” said William Woodruff, a law professor at Campbell University in Raleigh, N.C., and former colonel in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. It seems likely that the court would admit evidence about mefloquine at the sentencing hearing, Woodruff says, but how much weight they would give it is difficult to predict.
On August 19, a military jury will convene to decide Bales’s fate. His guilty plea takes the death penalty off the table. The question is whether his life sentence will include any possibility of parole.
No matter what the jury decides, we will probably never know exactly what role, if any, mefloquine played in this horrific crime. And as long as the drug is in use, it’s unlikely to be the last time we’re left to wonder. "
Although mefloquine has been eyed as a possible contributing factor in previous killings, so far apparently no one has argued successfully in court that the drug made someone less culpable for a crime.