One of 10 death row inmates are vets with PTSD; mental health no factor in sentencing

Roughly 10 percent of inmates on death row are U.S. military veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, but their mental health struggles are not being considered in sentencing, according to a study released Tuesday.

About 300 of the roughly 3,000 inmates on death row in state and federal prisons are military veterans, the majority of whom suffer from PTSD after serving in the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars, according to the study from the Death Penalty Information Center. Many veterans with PTSD have already been executed.

Over 800,000 Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD, according to the report. 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.

Defense lawyers and judges frequently fail to even recognize that the suspect on trial is a veteran, much less question the state of their mental health in determining their sentences.

“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,” the report says.

In older cases the dismissive nature of the justice system toward veterans may have been attributed to ignorance about PTSD, but the same problems still stand today when the country knows better, researchers said.

The first person executed in 2015, Andrew Brannan, was a decorated Vietnam War veteran who was diagnosed with PTSD and other forms of mental illness. Brannan, who was executed via lethal injection in Georgia after he killed a police officer in a traffic stop, had been given 100 percent mental disability by the Veterans Administration after returning from the war.

Richard Dieter, the report’s author, hopes that the results of the study will push the Justice Department to consider a veteran’s possible struggle with PTSD before handing down the death penalty.

“PTSD is not an excuse for all criminal acts, but it is a serious mental and emotional disorder that should be a strong mitigating factor against imposing the death penalty,” Mr. Dieter said.

Neither the Defense Department nor the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics track veterans on death row.

But death sentences and executions have decreased substantially in the United States over the past 15 years, with just 73 death sentences handed down in 2014: the lowest number in the four decades since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.