(To read expert analysis of Cisse’s PTSD defense click here.)
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — A jury watched five hours of taped criminal investigation videos Monday in the court-martial of Marine Sgt. Bassa Cisse, who faces a murder charge in the death of his 6-year-old daughter.
During the afternoon viewing, Cisse sat at the defense table with his head in his hands and cried along with a scene of him breaking down during the taped interview. In the interview, Cisse confessed to beating his daughter, Naffy.
"I was upset," he told the Navy Criminal Investigative Service agent. "I lost it. I wasn’t controlling myself."
But he said during the interview that the fatal beating — in which he hit and stepped on his daughter — should not be blamed on his downrange tours.
"I don’t want to blame it on Iraq," he said, breaking into tears on the video. "I am responsible."
Cisse on Friday pleaded guilty to negligent homicide, but the prosecution is seeking a murder conviction.
Neal Puckett, Cisse’s lead civilian defense attorney, argued during his opening statement earlier Monday that all the evidence showed was that Cisse, in a fit of uncontrollable anger that might have been the result of having post-traumatic stress disorder from two tours in Iraq, struck the girl.
"The evidence does not show that he beat his daughter to death," he told the jury. Testimony from a psychiatrist will "help you understand how someone suffering from this condition can do something so rash, resulting in death and regret for the rest of his life."
He described Cisse, assigned to Marine Wing Communications Squadron 18, as a "caring, loving father" who came from a background where corporal punishment was accepted.
"In his overzealousness, he may have expected too much of her," Puckett said. "He may have pushed her too hard."
Lead prosecutor Maj. Gregory Palmer told the jury that Cisse meant to hurt his daughter to teach her a lesson.
He began his opening statement standing in front of a photo of the young girl on a screen behind him.
"The little girl depicted in this image is dead and he killed her," Palmer said. He said Cisse, a former schoolteacher from the Ivory Coast, was "an unyielding man who sees failures in others as his own failures" and that "corporal punishment is the way he learned to discipline his students."
The girl was a big disappointment to her father, Palmer said. She was his child from a former relationship in the Ivory Coast and he tried for years to gain custody and bring her to the United States. He finally succeeded and had her come live with him, his wife and two younger children on Okinawa in July 2007.
But she kept disappointing him and had a habit of soiling her clothes, Palmer said. There was such an incident Oct. 20 and the next day Cisse kept harping on the incident.
"He wouldn’t let it go," and the girl soiled herself again, Palmer said. "And over the next 90 minutes he beat her to death for it."
He said Cisse forced the girl to clean herself up in the bathroom, washing her soiled clothing in the tub. Cisse backhanded her when she appeared to be stalling and she fell and hit her head, Palmer said. Her father then forced her to hang the clothes to dry on the balcony while still naked.
She failed to spread the clothes out to Cisse’s liking, Palmer said.
"He was so enraged at this slight that he savagely struck her again, sending her 4-foot tall, 6-year-old, 50 pounds into the cement," he said. "Then this 200-pound Marine stomped on this girl."
The injuries caused a crushed and severely lacerated liver, internal bleeding and a fractured skull.
"It’s your job to determine if this severe beating was simple negligence or something more," Palmer told the jury.
The trial is expected to continue through Wednesday.
Prosecution argues for manslaughterSeveral elements required for a murder conviction against Marine Sgt. Bassa Cisse have already been met by the defendant’s action on Friday, when he pleaded guilty to negligent homicide, a "lesser included offense," under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Cisse admitted that his 6-year-old daughter’s death Oct. 21, in which he hit and stepped on her in the family’s tower apartment on Camp Foster, was "due to simple negligence."
The prosecution, however, claims there was more to Naffy Cisse’s death than negligence. Maj. Gregory Palmer argued before a six-member court-martial panel Monday that Cisse is guilty of either second- or third-degree murder.
To prove second-degree murder, or manslaughter, he must prove Cisse’s beating was intentional and meant to inflict grievous bodily harm.
To prove third-degree murder, or aggravated assault, he needs to prove that Naffy Cisse’s death was caused by actions that displayed a "dangerous and wanton disregard for human life."
— David Allen
