AP,fileStaff Sgt. Robert Bales, left, 1st platoon sergeant, Blackhorse Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division participates in an August 2011 exercise at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.
It was the worst allegation of civilian killings by an American and has severely strained U.S.-Afghan ties at a critical time in the decade-old war.
Bales was read the charges on Friday at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he has been held since being flown from Afghanistan last week, a U.S. official said.
For alleged Afghan shooter, death penalty unlikely
Bales' civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said Friday without commenting on the specific charges that he believes the government will have a hard time proving its case and that at some stage in the prosecution his client's mental state will be an important issue.
Death toll in Afghanistan massacre climbs to 17
Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, says Bales was also charged Friday with six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault.
The decision to charge him with premeditated murder suggests that prosecutors plan to argue that he consciously conceived the killings. A military legal official for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case, noted that premeditated murder is not something that has to have been contemplated for a long time.
Criminal charges including 17 counts of murder and six counts of assault have been brought against Sgt. Robert Bales for alleged actions in Afghanistan. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports this is the first step toward the eventual filing of charges.
“These are unsurprising charges, predictable charges. I would have thought there would have been a few more lesser charges because no prosecutor likes to lose his principal charge and see the individual walk so usually some lesser offenses are charged as well,” Gary Solis, former head of the Marine Corps’ Military Law Branch and current adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, told msnbc.com.
“But what will really be significant is when the charges are referred to trial by the convening authority … because when they are referred, they will either be referred as capital or not. … If referred capital, that will change the complexion of the case.”
A senior U.S. official tells NBC News that Bales is likely to face lesser charges such as dereliction of duty and disobeying a lawful order.
The 38-year-old soldier and father of two, whose home is in Bonney Lake, Wash., faces trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but it could be months before any public hearing.
Legal jurisdiction in the Bales case is expected to be switched Friday from U.S. Forces-Afghanistan in Kabul to Bales' home base of Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., U.S. officials said.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said Bales could face the death penalty if he is convicted of murder, but it is unlikely. The U.S. military has not executed a service member since 1961. Legal experts say Bales could face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.
The maximum punishment for a premeditated murder conviction is death, dishonorable discharge from the armed forces, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade and total forfeiture of pay and allowances, Kolb said. The mandatory minimum sentence is life imprisonment with the chance of parole.
How Staff Sgt. Bales' lawyers are fighting for his lifeRetired Army Colonel and NBC military analyst Jack Jacobs examines the concerns set forth by the attorney for Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the soldier who was charged Friday with 17 counts of murder.
Legal experts have said the death penalty would be unlikely in the case. The military hasn't executed a service member since 1961 when an Army ammunition handler was hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl in Austria. None of the six men currently on death row at Fort Leavenworth was convicted for atrocities against foreign civilians.
“This is just the first step in what’s going to be a very long process and it still remains to be seen whether this is actually going to be a death penalty case or not,” Daniel Conway, a lawyer and former Marine staff sergeant who has been involved in battlefield investigations in Iraq and Afghanistan of alleged crimes by U.S. soldiers, told msnbc.com. “The basic idea here is that you can’t hold somebody in jail forever without charging them, so they’ve had to take this first step here.”
The charging document did not provide details about the killings, leaving the timeline unclear. The dead bodies were found in Balandi and Alkozai villages — one north and one south of the base.
Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. saw a U.S. soldier return to the base around 1:30 a.m. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4 a.m. said he saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m. It's unknown whether the Afghan guards saw the same U.S. soldier. If the gunman acted alone, information from the Afghan guards would suggest that he returned to base in between the shooting sprees.
It also is not known whether the suspect used grenades, Kolb said. The grenade launcher attachment is added to the standard issue M-4 rifle for some soldiers but not all, he said. Bales was assigned to provide force protection at the base.
Msnbc.com's Miranda Leitsinger and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Morning Joe w/ Joe Klein Troops should come home TEN IS ENOUGH Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Military wives rally around Karilyn Bales
Women are going online to show their compassion for the wife of the Army staff sergeant who has been charged with 17 counts of murder. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.
NBC News
RIDGEFIELD -- After her children fell asleep, Lori Volkman crept into her basement office, turned on her computer, and wept as she began to write.
“Dear Kari,” she typed from her home in Ridgefield, Wash. “I can’t imagine the thud you felt in your heart and the ice that coursed in your veins when you heard a knock and saw a uniform standing at your front door. I can't fully imagine the fear and shock ..."
Volkman's message began as an open letter to Karilyn Bales, the wife of Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales who has been charged with murdering 17 civilians in Afghanistan. Volkman wrote, "I don't condemn you for being married to a man who has been accused."
After all, the two women shared a lot in common. Both had husbands who served multiple deployments, and two young children they raised for months at a time alone. Both women had also written blogs about their time at home during their husband's deployments.
"The one thing I really learned when my husband came home from his last mobilization was coming to grips with the fact that unless I had experienced it, I might never understand. And I think there are a lot of people filling in blanks and assuming things and I wanted her to know that we didn't associate her with all of these events and what happened that we were gonna stand by her as military spouses and let her know that we knew she was going through a difficult time right now," Volkman told NBC News. "And I think that's what military spouses do, they rally around each other especially in difficult times."
Volkman, the deputy prosecuting attorney in Washington State, started writing in September 2010 when her husband was deployed to the Middle East. Her web audience is typically pretty small -- normally she gets just a few hundred hits -- but a few hours after her emotional letter, Volkman’s blog, wittylittlesecret.com, was flooded with comments and received more than 10,000 hits in three days. Many of the comments were from military wives, and nearly all of them were overwhelmingly positive.
Wife: Accused killer 'Loves children'
"The spouses are here for you," one read. "We have your back," said another. A third wrote, "There are many of us out here ... praying for her and her family."
When Volkman first heard about Robert Bales' story, she and her mother, who is also a military wife, talked about Bales' wife Karilyn.
"We cried," Volkman said. "I didn't know that that would be the common experience until I wrote it and saw the comments."
Volkman was surprised by the sheer volume of web traffic, but she was also shocked when women who said they were friends of Karilyn Bales commented that the staff sergeant’s wife had read the letter and comments too.
"I received emails from a couple of different friends [of Karilyn Bales]" said Volkman. "And [Karilyn] asked them to relay to me that she felt the outpouring of support and she was grateful for it, and that she cried."
NBC News attempted to contact Karilyn Bales, but she was not available for comment.
Earlier this week Volkman posted the messages from the women who claimed to be Karilyn Bales' friends. One of them read, “She’s just so grateful to you all … She really doesn’t know what will happen next; she is safe on base, but she doesn’t know when and if she’ll see Bob, or what will happen with regard to anything. To that end she’s just going to keep her nose to the grindstone and concentrate on the kids.”
Volkman's words seemed to have struck a chord with military wives all across the country. And of the hundreds of responses Volkman received, only a few were negative.
“The overwhelmingly positive response has blown me away,” Volkman wrote on her blog. “And yes, I’ve been posting every single comment.”
Military spouses often become surrogate families for one another, she said, driven by the uncertainty of war.
"I can't imagine what it must have been like for [Karilyn]," she said. "Her life will have changed forever at that moment, and that, as a military spouse, you can relate to. There are things that happen in our lives that change us forever. And that was that moment for her."
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