The Death Penalty Information Center is part­ner­ing with the Veteran Advocacy Project to present a six-part webi­nar series on Veterans and the Death Penalty. The webi­na­rs, which are co-spon­sored by Advancing Real Change, Inc. and Witness to Innocence, will address a broad range of seri­ous issues that have made vet­er­ans dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly vul­ner­a­ble to cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion. The series opens Monday, November 9, the week the nation com­mem­o­rates Veterans Day 2020, with a ses­sion on Veterans on Death Row.

In November 2015, DPIC released a report, Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty, that high­light­ed the plight of vet­er­ans on America’s death row. The report, which received a Congressional Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust Award for its treat­ment of the issue, pre­sent­ed the sto­ries of ​“vet­er­ans with debil­i­tat­ing scars from their time in com­bat … [who] have been judged to be the ​‘worst of the worst’ crim­i­nals, deprived of mer­cy, sen­tenced to death, and exe­cut­ed by the gov­ern­ment they served.” It detailed instances of defense lawyers who failed to inves­ti­gate vet­er­ans’ mil­i­tary ser­vice and relat­ed men­tal health issues; pros­e­cu­tors who dis­missed or belit­tled their claims of war trau­ma or por­trayed them as depraved trained killers; judges who dis­count­ed evi­dence of PTSD or brain trau­ma on appeal; and gov­er­nors who refused to bestow mer­cy based on injuries sus­tained in serv­ing the country.

Vietnam vet­er­an and for­mer Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er Robert Fisher is award­ed the Purple Heart by President Lyndon Johnson.

Battle Scars esti­mat­ed that 300 vet­er­ans were on death row across the United States, com­pris­ing as much as 10% of the nation’s con­demned pris­on­ers, many suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness caused or exac­er­bat­ed by their mil­i­tary ser­vice. The Veteran Advocacy Project pro­vides free legal ser­vices to vet­er­ans and their fam­i­lies, focus­ing on those with post­trau­mat­ic stress and trau­mat­ic brain injuries, assist­ing in obtain­ing access to hous­ing, health care, gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits, and advo­ca­cy and defense in crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. DPIC and VAP col­lab­o­rat­ed in plan­ning and pre­sent­ing the vet­er­ans webi­nar series as a fol­low-up to the Battle Scars report, bring­ing togeth­er schol­ars, men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, lawyers, exonerees, judges, and mil­i­tary jus­tice prac­ti­tion­ers to dis­cuss the unique issues fac­ing vet­er­ans in death penalty proceedings.

The series opens November 9 with an overview of the issues by Veteran Advocacy Project Criminal Programs Director, Art Cody, DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham, and for­mer DPIC Executive Director and Battle Scars author Richard Dieter. This is fol­lowed by pan­els on Special Issues in Investigating and Presenting Veterans’ Mitigation (Nov. 12); Capital Punishment Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Nov. 13); Mental Health Issues in Veterans’ Capital Cases (Nov. 17), and Veterans, Race, and the Death Penalty (Nov. 18). It con­cludes on November 19, with a ses­sion on Wrongful Capital Convictions of Military Veterans, in which vet­er­ans Kirk Bloodsworth, Ray Krone, and Ron Wright tell the sto­ries of their cas­es and how they were wrong­ful­ly sent to death row in the coun­try that they had served. 

For more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter for these webi­na­rs, see the links below:

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Read DPIC’s 2015 report, Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty.