Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty

In many respects, vet­er­ans in the United States are again receiv­ing the respect and grat­i­tude they deserve for hav­ing risked their lives and served their coun­try. Wounded sol­diers are wel­comed home, and their courage in start­ing a new and dif­fi­cult jour­ney in civil­ian life is right­ly applaud­ed. But some vet­er­ans with debil­i­tat­ing scars from their time in com­bat have received a very dif­fer­ent recep­tion. They have been judged to be the ​“worst of the worst” crim­i­nals, deprived of mer­cy, sen­tenced to death, and exe­cut­ed by the gov­ern­ment they served.

Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who have com­mit­ted heinous crimes present hard cas­es for our sys­tem of jus­tice. The vio­lence that occa­sion­al­ly erupts into mur­der can eas­i­ly over­come the spe­cial respect that is afford­ed most vet­er­ans. However, look­ing away and ignor­ing this issue serves nei­ther vet­er­ans nor victims.

PTSD has affect­ed an enor­mous num­ber of vet­er­ans return­ing from com­bat zones. Over 800,000 Vietnam vet­er­ans suf­fered from PTSD. At least 175,000 vet­er­ans of Operation Desert Storm were affect­ed by ​“Gulf War Illness,” which has been linked to brain can­cer and oth­er men­tal deficits. Over 300,000 vet­er­ans from the Afghanistan and Iraq con­flicts have PTSD. In one study, only about half had received treat­ment in the prior year.

Even with these men­tal wounds and life­time dis­abil­i­ties, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of vet­er­ans do not com­mit vio­lent crime. Many have been helped, and PTSD is now for­mal­ly rec­og­nized in the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty as a seri­ous ill­ness. But for those who have crossed an inde­fin­able line and have been charged with cap­i­tal mur­der, com­pas­sion and under­stand­ing seem to dis­ap­pear. Although a defin­i­tive count has yet to be made, approx­i­mate­ly 300 vet­er­ans are on death row today, and many oth­ers have already been executed.

Perhaps even more sur­pris­ing, when many of these vet­er­ans faced death penal­ty tri­als, their ser­vice and relat­ed ill­ness­es were bare­ly touched on as their lives were being weighed by judges and juries. Defense attor­neys failed to inves­ti­gate this crit­i­cal area of mit­i­ga­tion; pros­e­cu­tors dis­missed, or even belit­tled, their claims of men­tal trau­ma from the war; judges dis­count­ed such evi­dence on appeal; and gov­er­nors passed on their oppor­tu­ni­ty to bestow the coun­try’s mer­cy. In old­er cas­es, some of that dis­mis­sive­ness might be attrib­uted to igno­rance about PTSD and relat­ed prob­lems. But many of those death sen­tences still stand today when the coun­try knows better.

Unfortunately, the plight of vet­er­ans fac­ing exe­cu­tion is not of anoth­er era. The first per­son exe­cut­ed in 2015, Andrew Brannan, was a dec­o­rat­ed Vietnam vet­er­an with a diag­no­sis of PTSD and oth­er forms of men­tal ill­ness. Despite being giv­en 100% men­tal dis­abil­i­ty by the Veterans Administration after return­ing from the war, Georgia sought and won a death sen­tence because he bizarrely killed a police offi­cer after a traf­fic stop. The Pardons Board refused him clemen­cy. Others, like Courtney Lockhart in Alabama, returned more recent­ly with PTSD from ser­vice in Iraq. He was sen­tenced to death by a judge, even though the jury rec­om­mend­ed life. The U.S. Supreme Court turned down a request to review his case this year.

This report is not a defin­i­tive study of all the vet­er­ans who have been sen­tenced to death in the mod­ern era of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Rather, it is a wake-up call to the jus­tice sys­tem and the pub­lic at large: As the death penal­ty is being ques­tioned in many areas, it should cer­tain­ly be more close­ly scru­ti­nized when used against vet­er­ans with PTSD and oth­er men­tal dis­abil­i­ties stem­ming from their ser­vice. Recognizing the dif­fi­cult chal­lenges many vet­er­ans face after their ser­vice should war­rant a close exam­i­na­tion of the pun­ish­ment of death for those wound­ed war­riors who have com­mit­ted cap­i­tal crimes. Moreover, a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the dis­abil­i­ties some vet­er­ans face could lead to a broad­er con­ver­sa­tion about the wide use of the death penal­ty for oth­ers suf­fer­ing from severe mental illness.

The release of Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty was wide­ly cov­ered by the nation­al, state, and inter­natlion­al media. Among the out­lets reporting were:

• Reuters
• NBC News (#3 in top 7 Stories of the Day)
• Washington Post
• TIME
• Newsweek
• USA Today
• The New Yorker
• Los Angeles Times
• Boston Globe
• SFGate
• Texas Tribune
• Chicago Tribune
• Stars & Stripes
• Christian Science Monitor Washington Times
• Washington Examiner
• GQ Magazine
• Military​.com
• Yahoo News
• Gawker
• CBS News Radio
• U.S. News & World Report
• The Nation
• New York Magazine
• Wall St Hedge
• Jet Magazine
• NYSE Post
• Oregon​-Politics​.com
• The Guardian
• Huffington Post
• AFP
• BuzzFeed
• Business Insider
• The Daily Beast (Number 6 on ​“Cheat Sheet”)
• Vice News Morning Bulletin
• CorrectionsOne
• Daily Mail
• Al Jazeera America
• China Post
• RT​.com
• The Straits Times (AFP)
• Vox

Partial com­pi­la­tion of the texts and links of the articles.

Read the Battle Scars Press Release.

Read a USA Today Op-ed by for­mer Brigadier Generals James P. Cullen, David R. Irvine, and Stephen N. Xenakis

Last Day of Freedom is a rich­ly ani­mat­ed per­son­al nar­ra­tive that tells the sto­ry of Bill Babbitt’s deci­sion to stand by his broth­er, Manny, a Veteran return­ing from war, as he faces crim­i­nal charges, racism, and ulti­mate­ly the death penal­ty. Manny’s case is also described in DPIC’s report, Battle Scars. The 2015 film is a por­trait of a man at the nexus of the most press­ing social issues of our day – vet­er­ans’ care, men­tal health access and crim­i­nal jus­tice. Last Day of Freedom was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar for Best Documentary – Short Subject and won the IDA (International Documentary Association) award for Best Short Documentary.

Directed by Dee Hibbert-Jones & Nomi Talisman (poster image cour­tesy of Wikimedia Commons).

The Rand Center for Military Health Policy Research, Invisible Wounds Mental Health and Cognitive Care Needs of America’s Returning Veterans

The Veterans Defense Project (VDP)