Florida Executes Mentally Ill Vietnam Veteran Diagnosed with ​“Traumatic Brain Disease”

Florida has exe­cut­ed Bobby Joe Long (pic­tured), a men­tal­ly ill Vietnam vet­er­an with ser­vice-relat­ed trau­mat­ic brain injuries, after the U.S. Supreme Court on May 23, 2019 declined to review his case. Long had asked the Court to halt his exe­cu­tion to address “[w]hether an indi­vid­ual who suf­fers from severe men­tal ill­ness is exempt from exe­cu­tion under the Eighth Amendment. In 1980, Long received a diag­no­sis of ​“Traumatic Brain Disease” from the Veterans Administration as a result of injuries sus­tained dur­ing his mil­i­tary ser­vice. He also had a his­to­ry of sev­er­al trau­mat­ic head injuries dur­ing his child­hood. Following his diag­no­sis, he was dis­charged and giv­en a ​“ser­vice-con­nect­ed dis­abil­i­ty rat­ing,” but received lit­tle or no treat­ment from the mil­i­tary or the VA for his brain dam­age. Four years lat­er, he killed eight women in an eight-month span, includ­ing the mur­der for which he was sen­tenced to death. At Long’s tri­al, med­ical experts tes­ti­fied that his injuries had dam­aged the areas of the brain respon­si­ble for judg­ment and behavior control.

Long’s peti­tion for review — one of three he filed in the Court dur­ing the pen­den­cy of his death war­rant — urged the Court to pro­hib­it the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, say­ing, “[t]he same less­ened moral cul­pa­bil­i­ty cit­ed by Atkins [which pro­hib­it­ed the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty] and Roper [which pro­hib­it­ed the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers] in find­ing the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and juve­niles inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion applies with equal force to indi­vid­u­als with severe men­tal ill­ness.” His lawyers argued that “[s]evere men­tal ill­ness, like intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, is a per­sis­tent and fre­quent­ly debil­i­tat­ing med­ical con­di­tion that impairs an individual’s abil­i­ty to make ratio­nal deci­sions, con­trol impuls­es, eval­u­ate infor­ma­tion, and func­tion prop­er­ly in soci­ety. Because severe­ly men­tal­ly ill defen­dants have a less­ened moral cul­pa­bil­i­ty, because their impair­ments ​‘jeop­ar­dize the reli­a­bil­i­ty and fair­ness of cap­i­tal pro­ceed­ings,’… and because their dimin­ished capac­i­ty negates the ret­ribu­tive and deter­rent goals of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, they should be held cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly inel­i­gi­ble to receive the death penalty.”

Florida’s Catholic bish­ops had called on Governor Ron DeSantis to grant clemen­cy for Long, cit­ing both Long’s men­tal ill­ness and the Church’s teach­ings against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In a let­ter to the gov­er­nor, the Florida Catholic Conference wrote that, “[a]lthough [Long] caused much harm, soci­ety has been safe from his aggres­sive acts in the decades of his incar­cer­a­tion. Without tak­ing his life, soci­ety can be pro­tect­ed while he endures the alter­na­tive sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.” The let­ter called atten­tion to ​“the mul­ti­ple trau­mas [Long] expe­ri­enced through­out his life,” includ­ing a motor­cy­cle acci­dent he suf­fered in 1974. ​“That inci­dent pro­found­ly affect­ed him and his behav­iors,” the Florida con­fer­ence said, and ​“con­tributed to his receiv­ing a dis­abil­i­ty rat­ing from the mil­i­tary, from which he was honorably discharged.”

Long was the eighth per­son exe­cut­ed in the United States in 2019 and the first in Florida. He is the 1498^th per­son put to death in the U.S. since exe­cu­tions resumed in 1977.

Long’s peti­tion also argued that exe­cut­ing him after he has already spent 33 years in prison vio­lates the con­sti­tu­tion­al ban on dou­ble jeop­ardy because Florida autho­rized two pun­ish­ments for first-degree mur­der at the time of his tri­al — death or life with eli­gi­bil­i­ty for parole after 25 years — and he had already served the equiv­a­lent of the statu­to­ri­ly pre­scribed sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tive. He also filed peti­tions seek­ing review of Florida’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and its clemency process.

(Florida Catholic Conference asks gov­er­nor to halt exe­cu­tion of ser­i­al killer, Catholic News Agency, May 21, 2019; Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, Long v. Inch, U.S. Supreme Court, May 20, 2019.) Read DPIC’s report, Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty. See U.S. Supreme Court, Mental Illness, and U.S. Military.