He appeared to be in complete control of his emotions, despite being on national TV with an ignorant and hostile ahem..."journalist" being asked slanted questions about murdering 24 people, a trait highly uncharacteristic of one who might go "berserk!!"(I always liked that word, by the way). He was unflappable.
That said, I believed in him from day 1, and still do today. Now that I've had a chance to watch his mannerisms as he testifies to doing some ghastly things, I am even more convinced he was doing his duty.
I think he interviewed as well as could be expected, although I don't really know if this helped him. We'll never know what ended up on the cutting room floor...
I wish he had showed a little more emotion, myself. (And read my entire reasoning before jumping on me for this)
Innocent people generally recoil when being seriously charged with a heinous crime. Guilty people often remain calm and collected, and stick to their story. Now, in this particular case, I think that there was no deliberate murder, just a series of bad decisions that were more or less within the framework of the ROE. These bad decisions, while marginally legally supportable, turned out to have catastrophic results.
Now, anyone can make a mistake, even an inexperienced person following the guidelines and doing the right thing. The scene in Iraq, especially that route, was a bad one. I'll tell you firsthand that those roads are 99.9 percent an ocean of boredom, where you never see the shark till it has your foot. That kind of stress wears on you. And, in the end, our government would rather let Marines die than risk mistakes like this making it to the news. So the deck is already stacked well against him.
Still, emotion would have been better displayed than held. I know a lot of interrogators that have taught me about guilt and innocence, and a tell tale sign of someone who is hiding something is being overly calm and collected when charged with something they didn't do. In fact, I know people that have killed when they absolutely had to, and they're more affected when they talk about it. The problem here is that Wuterich showed very little remorse at killing a lot of unarmed people.
All context, ROEs and legal justifications aside, people without any understanding of the event or human nature instinctively pick up on that. People who make horrific mistakes, even steely eyed gunslingers trained for battle that basically did nothing wrong, would show some kind of visible reaction to the slimy questions that jackass reporter asked.
It's certainly no admission of guilt, but it doesn't paint him in a very good light. The other possibility, which wouldn't particularly help, is that he has the common Marine attitude towards Iraqis. Namely, that they're about as human as cockroaches. That may explain his lack of reaction and remorse, but again, the only thing the average viewer is going to take from that is his lack of emotion in what should be an emotional interview.
At any rate, we'll see what the trial brings. I just think that this was an interview that should have been avoided by the defense.