A personal webblog made by a French friend of John Thuesen, an ex-Marine Iraq War Veteran suffering from PTSD, sentenced to death in 2010, in Polunsky Unit death row, Texas.
Since April the 15th 2016, a new rule from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prohobits the possibility of publishing any informations from a prisoner on the web, his file or his own writings. That is why the Facebook page of John Thuesen has been suppressed.
Unfortunately, I am not a specialist of the American Law and I am not really sure of what I am allowed to do or not as regard my friend's case. If anyone had more informations about this new rule regarding prisoners, please may you contact me and let me know ? I will be extremely careful here so that nothing might be a cause of trouble for our friend.
As a friend of John living in France, I am trying to inform people about the situation of Veterans who are in Death Row while they are suffering from P.T.S.D., like him. None of the texts or comments published on this blog were written by him, from him, but only written by his friends. You will also find many articles from newspapers speaking of similar cases.
If you want to help for anything, please don't hesitate to let a comment or to contact me.
Thank you in advance for your support, and for being here, on this page.
..... The first person executed in the United States this year, Andrew Brannan, was a Vietnam veteran who had been granted 100% disability because of his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other problems stemming from his military service. Approximately 300 other veterans remain on death row and face execution. As retired Army general officers, lawyers and a psychiatrist, these facts concern us greatly, and they should disturb many other Americans, as well.
..... On Veterans Day, we honor those who bravely served their country and offer our helping hand to assist those who have returned from war with wounds and physical disabilities. Countless veterans have endured violence and trauma that few others can fully imagine. They deserve our thanks. But some are left behind.
..... Our hospitals and therapists have performed wonders in assisting wounded veterans who lost limbs. A prosthetic is not the same as the original, but with the courage of service-members, combined with an understanding and supportive community, we are making progress. We wish the same could be said for our veterans who come back with deep brain and mental wounds. Their requests for understanding and compassion are too often dismissed.
..... A new report from the Death Penalty Information Center is a wake-up call for an issue that few have focused on. Even as the use of capital punishment is declining, veterans suffering with PTSD and other service-related problems languish on death rows across the country.
..... Brannan was executed in Georgia this year for one irrational act of violence that occurred 17 years ago. He killed a police officer who had stopped him for speeding. That is a terrible crime, but as the Veterans Administration had determined, Brannan was mentally disabled with deep scars from his combat in Vietnam.
..... James Davis is also a Vietnam veteran with PTSD. He belatedly received his Purple Heart medal on death row in North Carolina, thanks to the work of a fellow veteran and therapist and a pastor, Jim Johnson, who visited Davis. When Johnson pinned the medal on him, Davis saluted proudly, before retreating back into the darkness of his mental problems. He could still be executed today for the murders he committed in 1995, and he has all but given up his appeals.
John Thuesen is on death row in Texas — a veteran of the Iraq conflict. His PTSD was not properly diagnosed or treated, and his lawyers did not do enough to explain his condition to the jury that convicted him of murdering his ex-girlfriend. Texas executes far more people than any other state in the country, so there is a real concern that his current appeal could be denied.
..... PTSD is not as obvious as a missing limb, but it can be deeply debilitating. The trauma from combat can simmer under the surface for years, then erupt in violence, often against family members. It can be triggered by anything that jars a memory of a time when a person was under violent attack, demanding immediate and forceful reaction. Years later, the previous danger is no longer present, but the memory may set off a similar reaction, with deadly consequences. PTSD can be treated, but in one study only about half of the veterans who needed treatment received it.
..... In a criminal sentencing hearing, PTSD should be a strong mitigating factor. It’s not an excuse or a demand for acquittal. However, the very symptoms that define PTSD can be frightening to a jury if not carefully explained by a mental health expert familiar with the illness. Defense attorneys are often not adequately prepared to investigate and present this kind of evidence; prosecutors or judges might dismiss it because others with similar combat experiences did not murder anyone. Perhaps some of the blame should be more broadly shared because we sometimes choose to look away when a veteran’s scars are not the kind that we know how to cope with.
..... We are not arguing here about the morality or the utility of the death penalty. But at a minimum, when a judge or jury is weighing a person’s life or death, they should have full knowledge and understanding of that person’s life history. Veterans with PTSD — and, in fact, all those with serious mental illness at the time of their crime — deserve a complete investigation and presentation of their mental state by the best experts in the field.
..... Decision-makers — jurors, judges and governors — should be informed that such information is a valid reason to spare a defendant from capital punishment. There are alternatives, such as life in prison without parole.
..... We should begin by determining the exact scope of this problem: Who are the veterans on death row? How could their military experience have affected their commission of a crime? How well were their disabilities investigated and presented in court? And what should be done when the system fails them?
..... Veterans facing the death penalty deserve this assistance.
..... Brig. Gen. (Ret.) James P. Cullen, USA, is a former judge for the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) David R. Irvine, USA, is a former Deputy Commander of the 96th U.S. Army Reserve Command. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Stephen N. Xenakis, USA, M.D. is an adjunct clinical professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.
..... In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.
For a brief moment, John Thuesen was able to smile. Pressing his hand against the glass, he sought out the warmth my hand could provide.
My hand on the glass was his only way of “connecting” with another human being, he explained.That was on the rare occasion he spent any time in the company of another human being.
Locked inside an 8x10 cell in solitary confinement for 23 hours each day, Thuesen has little to do but to wrestle with his demons; his remorse; his grief.
The 31-year-old man sitting on Texas death row barely resembled the 18-year-old who enthusiastically signed up for the Marines more than a decade ago.
Growing up in a farming community in south Texas, Thuesen decided to join the Marines after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. His motivating factor—to serve proudly and help defend his country from future attacks. After boot camp, he was deployed to Iraq in 2004 and was placed directly into the hotbed of conflict for nine long months.
No training could prepare him for the unpredictable and dangerous side of war. He was often on edge.
Few of his memories in Iraq were pleasant, but the one that continues to haunt him occurred while he was nestled inside the turret of his Humvee with his machine gun pointed at a vehicle checkpoint. Checkpoints were good opportunities for suicide insurgents. Their goal was to kill as many American soldiers as possible by driving vehicles loaded with explosives through checkpoints and then detonating them.
Thuesen knew all this when he spotted a vehicle with darkened windows turning a corner at high speeds, approaching the checkpoint where he was standing guard. Alarmed at the escalating situation, Thuesen’s military training kicked in and his heart began beating fast as he began zeroing in at the looming target.
“The driver ignored our warning gestures and shouting to stop. We all were getting concerned so one of our men fired a warning flare into the air that could be clearly seen in board daylight as our last attempt to get his attention for the driver to halt. Ultimately the warnings were ignored and he continued towards us.”
Thuesen realized the sedan could be a bomb on wheels; he hunkered down in fighting position with his eye to his sight and waited for the last possible moment before allowing his trembling finger to squeeze the trigger.
The quiet mild-mannered Texan was now was being pushed to his mental limits by a life or death situation. Systematically, he started firing—first at the tires and wheels, and then to the engine—hoping the first two areas would be enough to stop the car in its tracks. As the continuous stream of bullets tore through the car, piercing the metal like it was flimsy paper, the car continued to roll onward unabated. Realizing the situation was now critical; Thuesen was forced to take aim towards the front windshield and started pumping bullets.
Within seconds, the car started to slow down and eventually crawled to a complete stop. It suddenly became deathly quiet, there was no explosion or fire or further disturbance. Seeing this Thuesen and his fellow Marines took a deep breath and a big sigh of relief thinking the event was over. Unbeknownst to the men, the rear door of the vehicle swung open and out stumbled a hysterical boy covered with blood, and pieces of flesh from the occupants in the front seat.
Fortunately, the maze of gunfire pumped into the car missed the boy. But it became obvious he was severely traumatized from this horrific incident. Shaken to his core, Thuesen became numb to the initial experience but when he finally realized the enormity and sadness of the situation “I held back my flood of tears from ever appearing—I was operating under the standard operating procedure rules for engagement, but in events like these, one always questions if you did the right thing.”
Thuesen finished his Iraq tour of duty and eventually returned to Texas serving out his remaining time in the military with the Marine Reserves.But he wasn’t the same man who had left for war. He suffered from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), explained Brad Levenson Thuesen’s attorney through the Texas Office of Capital Writs.
“John was increasingly withdrawn and distant—the war changed him significantly,” Levenson said. “He was a different man after his time in Iraq according to his family and friends. PTSD did play a role in this unfortunate incident.”
In August 2008, Thuesen was admitted to the Department of Veteran Affairs hospital because he was suicidal and hearing voices. The New York Times reported that Thuesen was released four days later, despite his mother’s objections. Less than a year later, Thuesen was arrested for killing his girlfriend, Rachel Joiner and her older brother Travis.
“I have no real memory of the incident—it just happened and I snapped,” he said. "I don't know why I did it. I just wanted to see her for a little bit, but she wouldn't let me." When he began to realize what he had done, Thuesen was horrified.
“I have incredible remorse and grief,” he began, “Not only for what I done but for the families’ lives I have destroyed. I have apologized to everyone I could, especially privately in my prayers to Rachel and Travis for my actions.”
“Nothing can change what I have done and I must live with that,” he said.
His attorney has argued that PTSD has played a significant role in Thuesen’s actions that night and continues to plead his case in court. Thuesen’s state direct appeal has been denied and he awaits the convicting court’s decision in state post-conviction litigation. The principle issue in Thuesen’s case is whether the jury had sufficient information regarding Thuesen’s PTSD in order to find him guilty of capital murder and sentence him to death.
The trauma of war has left an indelible scar that may have been the forerunner of tragic events that now plague his life. A decade ago, Thuesen was proudly serving his country in Iraq. Now he sits alone in solitary confinement cell on Texas Death Row for capital murder.
..... Post-traumatic stress disorder, or "PTSD," is a condition that plagues our servicemen and women at an alarming rate. PTSD is a condition caused by severe mental and emotional stress brought on by either physical injury or severe psychological shock. The Wounded Warrior Project estimates that approximately 400,000 of the U.S.'s military personnel suffer from the condition. One such soldier is John Thuesen, a man currently awaiting execution in a Texas prison for the 2009 murder of his then girlfriend, Rachel Joiner, and her brother.
..... Thuesen served in Operation Iraqi Freedom more than a decade ago until he returned home to his native Texas, settling in College Station. Upon Theusen's return home, his family and friends noticed something was different about him. They said that he was depressed and drank too much. One former girlfriend testified at his trial that he became violent with her on several occasions. In 2008 Thuesen was briefly hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt. His family believed he needed more treatment, but, despite their concerns, the doctors at the Veterans Administration decided to send him home anyways. Six months after his release from the hospital, in March of 2009, Thuesen committed the murders for which he was eventually sentenced to death.
..... Some prosecutors around the country have chosen not to seek the death penalty in cases involving military servicemen and women that have shown a history of mental illness. Prosecutors in the trial of Eddie Ray Routh, the former soldier convicted of killing former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, did not ask for the death penalty, and Routh's history of mental instability was a key part of his defense. At Thuesen's trial, prosecutors emphasized his history of violence towards those around him, telling Judge Bryan that Thuesen's defense team provided jurors with all the information necessary to understand his past.
..... John Thuesen's appellate lawyers now argue that the attorneys who represented him at trial did not present adequate evidence to properly inform the jury of the effects that PTSD may have had on their client, a view shared by Brazos County District Judge Travis Bryan III. Thuesen's case is currently in front of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will have the final say in whether he will get a new trial and a chance at a lesser sentence.
To Tim Rojas, it feels like just yesterday that he and his Marine buddy John Thuesen were on the battlefield together, looking death in the face and trying to make sure they both got home to their families.
In reality, it’s been more than a decade since they left Iraq. Rojas works at a high-powered Houston investment firm. Thuesen, though, is in a 6-by-10 solitary cell, hoping that Texas’ highest criminal court will spare him from the death penalty.
“Hope is everything,” Rojas said.
Thuesen, 31, has been on death row since he was convicted in 2010 of fatally shooting his girlfriend Rachel Joiner and her brother Travis Joiner in their College Station home.
In July, Brazos County District Judge Travis Bryan III agreed with Thuesen’s appellate lawyers that the attorneys who defended Thuesen at trial didn’t adequately inform jurors about their client’s post-traumatic stress disorder after his return from combat. With more information about PTSD and its effects, Bryan said in court documents, the jurors who sentenced Thuesen to death may have decided differently. Bryan’s ruling is now under review by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will ultimately decide whether Thuesen should get a new trial and a chance at a lesser sentence.
Brazos County prosecutors argue the jury heard plenty of evidence about the traumatic experiences Thuesen faced, along with evidence that he had a history of acting violently toward those he claimed to care for.
The district court ruling in Thuesen’s case is particularly important, his lawyers and others said, as the criminal justice system deals with an increasing number of veterans with PTSD. The National Center for PTSD and the RAND Corp. estimate that up to 20 percent of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan experience it. In 2008, The New York Times reported 121 veterans from those battlefields had been charged with killings.
911 call
In Texas, 10 of the 261 death row inmates reported some military service, according to the Department of Criminal Justice.
“Someone who has served his country, who’s seen traumatic situations while serving his country, who’s worked to save the lives of his fellow soldiers — that’s all important for a jury to know about when they consider what the right punishment should be,” said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Services, a nonprofit organization that represents death row inmates.
Thuesen, who was a football player and champion turkey farmer in high school, signed up to be a Marine before he graduated. When he returned to his rural Texas home near College Station, his family and friends said, he had changed.
He was depressed and drank too much. A former girlfriend testified at his trial that he was violent with her. After an attempted suicide, Thuesen was briefly hospitalized, but despite his family’s concerns that he needed more treatment, doctors from the Veterans Administration sent him home.
About six months later, in March 2009, police responded to a 911 call from Thuesen and found him with the bullet-riddled bodies of Rachel and Travis Joiner. Thuesen told police he killed Rachel, a track star at Texas A&M University, because he was angry. He sneaked into her house while she was out and waited for hours, jealously stewing about time she spent with someone else. When her brother, also an A&M student, came to her aid, Thuesen shot him, too.
At his 2010 trial, jurors were told that Thuesen had lost a Marine buddy. They knew he had seen a young boy splattered with his family’s blood after Thuesen’s Marine unit sprayed their car with bullets as it hurtled through a military checkpoint. But, his lawyers argue, the jurors didn’t hear expert testimony that could have helped them understand the lasting effects of PTSD.
Had jurors been presented with such expert testimony, “they would have come to a different conclusion,” said Cathryn Crawford, who served as special litigation counsel in Thuesen’s appeal.
Exclusion?
Lisa Jaycox, a senior behavioral health scientist with RAND, said violent behavior isn’t a hallmark of PTSD, but that the disorder can contribute to it. When those who have experienced trauma also struggle with depression and self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs, she said, that often causes problems at work or in relationships. The combination can be overwhelming.
“It can therefore spiral into people having worse and worse functioning over time,” Jaycox said.
Anthony Giardino, a lawyer and veteran, argued in a 2009 Fordham Law Review article that there should be a categorical exclusion from the death penalty for combat veterans who had PTSD at the time of their offenses.
Courts, he wrote, “should find that it is unconscionable for the government to sentence soldiers and veterans to death for criminal actions that would likely not have happened but for their military service.”
Some prosecutors have chosen not to seek the death penalty in capital cases against veterans. Though they didn’t provide a public explanation, prosecutors in Erath County declined to seek the death penalty for Eddie Ray Routh, the former Marine convicted of killing Navy SEAL and American Sniper hero Chris Kyle and another man. Routh, who was sentenced to life without parole, had a history of mental health problems, and PTSD played a key role in his defense.
Complex disorder
Prosecutors in Brazos County have argued that Thuesen had a history of acting violently when he was angry. They told Bryan that the former Marine’s trial lawyers gave jurors all the information needed to understand Thuesen’s past. Jessica Escue, an assistant district attorney, said the defense did an “admirable” job, and that prosecutors will ask the Court of Criminal Appeals to affirm Thuesen’s death sentence.
Rojas, Thuesen’s friend, agrees with prosecutors on one point:
“PTSD is not some sort of allowance to do bad things,” he said. He added, though, that Thuesen doesn’t deserve to die. The disorder, he said, “impacts veterans in a unique way that causes horrific situations.”
Photo by Callie Richmond Dennis and Patty Thuesen look through photos of their son John from his childhood and his service in the military. John, an Iraq war veteran, is appealing his death sentence for the murders of his girlfriend and her brother, Rachel and Travis Joiner, claiming that lawyers at his original trial did not adequately inform jurors about his PTSD.
The car would not stop. Flares did not stop it. Shots fired into the engine didn't stop it. Exaggerated hand gestures and hollering surely didn't. As far as the four Marines stationed at a roadside checkpoint in Iraq knew, the sedan hurtling toward them was a bomb on wheels.
Tim Rojas flashed a thumbs-up at his fellow lance corporal, John Thuesen, 21, the quiet Texan manning the machine gun on the Humvee’s turret. Bullets ripped through the car. The driver slumped over the steering wheel as the sedan crawled to a stop.
There was no explosion. The Marines were alive, and in that moment, Rojas recalled, the four men felt like heroes.
Then, the car’s rear door opened, and a boy, covered in his family’s blood, terror all over his face, ran screaming toward them.
“It was a terrible feeling,” Rojas said, his eyes glassy with tears, recalling the day that he said forever changed their lives.
That was nearly a decade ago. Now, Rojas is again standing with his buddy.
Thuesen, 30, is on death row for shooting his girlfriend and her brother in their College Station home in 2009. Thuesen and his lawyers have filed an appeal, arguing that the jury would have imposed a life sentence had it been fully informed about the damage that post-traumatic stress disorder can cause. Rojas is now talking about their ordeal, hoping it will help with his friend’s appeal and bring more awareness about post-traumatic stress disorder from the battlefield.
“The engine that is your mind is going to overheat,” Rojas said, “and it’s going to break down.”
Prosecutors, however, argued that the jury had heard sufficient testimony about Thuesen’s military service and his post-traumatic stress. Jurors also heard about his history of acting out in jealousy — even before his deployment. And they agreed with prosecutors that Thuesen was a cold, calculating killer who knew right from wrong when he shot the siblings and that he would continue to be a threat, even in prison.
The evidence showed that Thuesen “acts out and hurts others when he is mad or angry,” prosecutors wrote in a brief responding to his appeal.
On the afternoon of March 6, 2009, Rachel Joiner, 21, returned to the home she shared with her older brother, Travis Joiner, to find Thuesen armed and waiting in her room. He had broken into their house and had been there for hours, brooding about time she had been spending with another man.
Thuesen told police that he shot Rachel Joiner, a track star and student at Texas A&M University, because he was angry. He then turned his gun on Travis Joiner, 23, an aerospace engineering student at the university, who had run to his sister’s aid.
At the trial in 2010, prosecutors brought in former girlfriends who testified that they had also experienced Thuesen’s jealousy. One said Thuesen stalked her; another said she had been assaulted.
.
In closing arguments, the prosecutor told jurors that Thuesen used the skills he honed in the military against those he claimed to love.
“We don’t track people down in their homes and shoot them in the back. That is not, and it will never be, and it can never be acceptable or excusable,” the Brazos County assistant district attorney, Brian Baker, said.
But Thuesen’s friends and family in Bellville, where he grew up not far from College Station, saw something different. They told jurors that the man they knew before the war did not come back from Iraq. He was withdrawn, he drank heavily and there were nights, his mother, Patty Thuesen, recalled recently, when he would come into his parents’ room sobbing.
“He just wasn’t my John that I knew,” his father, Dennis Thuesen, said.
In August 2008, Thuesen, a former football player and champion turkey farmer, checked into a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, telling doctors he was suicidal and hearing voices. Doctors monitored him for four days before releasing him with a prescription for medication and therapy.
“We wanted him to stay,” Thuesen said. “The doctor looked at me and told me, ‘He’ll be fine.’”
“I think they bear some responsibility,” Thuesen said.
Drew Brookie, a Veteran Affairs spokesman, said that meeting the mental health needs of veterans was a priority but that because of privacy concerns, he could not comment about Thuesen’s case.
A 2008 study by the RAND Corporation estimated that about 300,000 of the 1.64 million military members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan had post-traumatic stress disorder. The corporation also surveyed veterans and found that among those diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, only 53 percent had received treatment in the previous 12 months. In January 2008, The New York Times reported 121 cases in which veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had been charged with killings.
Some legal and psychiatric experts have called for the courts to exclude veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder from execution eligibility.
“The tragedy of the wounded combat veteran who faces execution by the nation he has served seems to be an avoidable one, and we, as a society, should take action to ensure that it does not happen,” Dr. Hal Wortzel, professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado-Denver School of Medicine, and Dr. David B. Arciniegas, professor of psychiatry, neurology, and physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Baylor College of Medicine, wrote in a 2010 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
Thuesen’s new lawyers argue that had his trial lawyers done a more thorough job of explaining the prevalence and long-term damage of post-traumatic stress disorder, the jury would have given him a life sentence.
Prosecutors contend that jurors had all the information they needed about Thuesen’s military service, his history of troubling behavior and the way he gunned down two young students.
As the courts mull Thuesen’s appeals, Rojas writes occasional letters to the death row inmate who was like a brother to him in the desert battlefield. They write about the mundane things — weather, sports, family — but never about that day at the checkpoint. Still, sometimes, he said, the agony of those moments returns.
“It’s so slow, but it’s so thick you can’t stop it,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “I wish every day that car had stopped.”
