JAG CENTRAL

From the AP (via MSNBC), an update on Day 4 of the SGT Hasan Akbar death penalty phase. Today, he read an extremely short unsworn statement to the panel:

“I apologize for my actions. ... When I did that, I felt my life was in jeopardy, and I had other problems,” Akbar told the 15-person military jury.

Akbar spoke for less than a minute, making an unsworn statement that could not be cross-examined. He testified in such a low voice that even prosecutors sitting nearby had trouble hearing, with one lawyer even cupping his ear.

In closing arguments of the sentencing phase, chief prosecutor Lt. Col. Michael Mulligan urged jurors to sentence Akbar to death and reject claims that the soldier's background caused his actions.

Mulligan described Akbar as a nearly lifelong religious ideologue. "He is a hate-filled, ideologically driven murderer," the prosecutor said, adding that Akbar wrote in his diary in 1997, "My life will not be complete unless America is destroyed."

The military judge was to give jurors instructions before they begin deliberations.