Vets suffering from PTSD need our help ! (USA Today)

article publied on USA Today, November, 12, 2015
written by James P. Cullen, David R. Irvine and Stephen N. Xenakis 
link : http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/11/11/vets-suffering-ptsd-need-our-help-death-row-column/75520218/

Lt. Andrew Brannan during the Vietnam War.

..... 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.

Ex-Marine on death row says jurors should have been told more about PTSD

By Brandi Grissiom, from Austin Bureau, August, 2nd, 2015
Published in the Dallas Morning News
Link : http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20150802-ex-marine-on-death-row-says-jurors-should-have-been-told-more-about-ptsd.ece

Texas execution chamber

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.”