SEATTLE - The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians during nighttime raids on two villages last year deferred entering a plea Thursday to charges that could bring the death penalty. The judge ordered a review of his sanity before he can present any mental health defence.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and other charges in the attack, which caused such outrage that the U.S. temporarily halted combat operations in Afghanistan.

The judge, Col. Jeffery Nance, took up arguments over whether Bales can present a mental health defence or testimony from mental health experts, given that he has not yet participated in a "sanity board" review.

The judge ordered that to take place, but made no decisions about the conditions for the review or what information from it would be turned over to prosecutors — something prosecutors and defence attorneys have been arguing about.

Such reviews are conducted by neutral doctors tasked with discerning a defendant's mental state at the time of the crime and whether he's competent to stand trial.

Bales was serving his fourth deployment, and his lawyers said he may have suffered from a traumatic brain injury. His mental health has been expected to be a key part of the case.

"An accused simply cannot be allowed to claim a lack of mental responsibility through the introduction of expert testimony from his own doctors, while at the same time leaving the government with no ability to overcome its burden of proof because its doctors have been precluded from conducting any examination of the very matters in dispute," prosecutor Maj. Robert Stelle wrote in a Jan. 3 motion obtained by The Associated Press.

Bales' attorneys have said a traumatic brain injury may have been sustained when he was knocked out by an improvised bomb explosion during one of his tours in Iraq.

One of those attorneys, John Henry Browne, said Thursday that the defence has obtained medical records from Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington state indicating Bales had suffered from TBI and PTSD, but he described those records as incomplete.

The attorneys have thus far refused to let him take part in the sanity board because the Army would not let him have a lawyer present for the examination, would not record the examination and would not appoint a neuropsychologist expert in traumatic brain injuries to the board.

"These are not independent doctors; they're doctors who work for the Army, and the Army is trying to kill my client," Browne said after the hearing.

However, Browne also said Bales might participate — as long as only certain information about the results are forwarded to prosecutors. Prosecutors should promptly receive findings about his current competence, but nothing about his mental state at the time of the attack, they said.

To allow the sanity board to share the basic results of the examination — the "short form," with answers about his mental health diagnosis and mental state at time of the attack — would be to provide prosecutors with information based on compelled statements from the defendant. That could violate his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, defence co-counsel Emma Scanlan told the judge.

The Army isn't entitled to such information unless the defence makes an issue of Bales' mental health at trial, which they haven't yet done, she said.

The judge said he would rule later on the conditions of the sanity review and when the prosecutors could have access to the results.

Prosecutors said Bales, a father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., had been drinking before he slipped away from his remote outpost in southern Afghanistan to attack the villages. Soldiers testified at a pretrial hearing in November that Bales returned to the base alone, soaked in blood, after the shootings.

Bales' lawyers have criticized the base at Camp Belambay where Bales was stationed, saying that Special Forces members there gave him banned substances including alcohol, Valium and steroids. They insist that by seeking the death penalty the Army is ignoring its own responsibility for sending him to war.

Prosecutors also argued Thursday for setting the trial quickly — for June 10 — because many witnesses remain in a volatile part of Afghanistan. Two possible witnesses have already been killed in separate and unrelated attacks, they noted, and as American troops withdraw, access to those witnesses is only going to get tougher and more dangerous.

Browne said the prosecutors neglected to mention one thing about the two witnesses who were killed: They were on a list of insurgents, and were actually killed by U.S. forces.

Scanlan said setting a trial this year is unrealistic, given how much time the defence team needs to review more than 30,000 pages of discovery materials, and find and interview witnesses — not to mention getting their own client to open up. The defence has suggested a May 2014 trial date.

The judge did not set a trial date, but did indicate that June was too soon.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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