[Peace-discuss] LAT: "These Courts Give Wayward Veterans A Chance"

[Robert Naiman]

Los Angeles Times
March 10, 2009
Pg. 1

These Courts Give Wayward Veterans A Chance

The first veterans court opened last year in Buffalo, N.Y.; its
success stories have led to more across the country.

By Nicholas Riccardi

Reporting from Tulsa, Okla. — U.S. military veterans from three
decades pass through Judge Sarah Smith's courtroom here, reporting on
their battles with drug addiction, alcoholism and despair. Those who
find jobs and stabilize their lives are rewarded with candy bars and
applause. Those who backslide go to jail.

Smith radiates an air of maternal care from the bench. As the veterans
come before her, she softly asks: "How are you doing? Do you need
anything?" But if a veteran fails random drug tests, she doesn't
flinch at invoking his sentence. She keeps a drill sergeant's cap in
her office.

Her court is part of a new approach in the criminal justice system:
specialized courts for veterans who have broken the law. Judges have
been spurred by a wave of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan,
battling post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries and
stumbling into trouble with the law. But advocates of the courts say
they also address a problem as old as combat itself.

"Some families give their sons or daughters to service for their
country, and they're perfectly good kids. And they come back from war
and just disintegrate before our eyes," said Robert Alvarez, a
counselor at Ft. Carson in Colorado who is advocating for a veterans
court in the surrounding county. "Is it fair to put these kids in
prison because they served and got injured?"

The few veterans courts in the nation are modeled on drug courts that
allow defendants to avoid prison in exchange for strict monitoring.
Most are only a couple of months old, and it is difficult to track
their effectiveness, but the results from the first court, which
opened in Buffalo, N.Y., in January 2008, are striking.

Of the more than 100 veterans who have passed through, only two had to
be returned to the traditional criminal court system because they
could not shake narcotics or criminal behavior, said Judge Robert
Russell. That is a far lower rate of recidivism than in drug courts.

"It's the right thing to do for those who have made a number of
sacrifices for us," Russell said. "If they've been damaged and injured
in the course of their service . . . and we can help them become
stable, we must."

There are no comprehensive statistics on how often veterans get in
trouble with the law, and the majority never become entangled with the
legal system. But psychiatrists and law enforcement officials agree
that the traumas of combat can lead to addiction and criminality.

Studies have shown that as many as half of the troops returning from
Iraq and Afghanistan suffer post-traumatic stress and other disorders,
and mental health is the second-most treated ailment for returning
veterans in the Department of Veterans Affairs system.

Since Russell's court started, veterans courts have opened in Orange
and Santa Clara counties in California; Tulsa, Okla.; and Anchorage.
Pittsburgh, southern Wisconsin, Phoenix and Colorado Springs, Colo.,
are opening or considering new courts this year. Some in Congress have
proposed a federal program to help spread veterans courts across the
country.

Most veterans courts admit only nonviolent felony offenders, though
some include violent crimes. Defendants are required to plead guilty
to their crimes.

In exchange for a suspended sentence that can include prison time,
they must consent to regular court visits, counseling and random drug
testing. Should they waver from the straight and narrow, their
sentence goes into effect.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Wendy Lindley started her veterans
court in November after a young Iraq war veteran on her docket died of
a drug overdose. "It was horrible," she said.

As in most of the nation's nascent veterans courts, many of the
defendants in Lindley's court served in the Vietnam or Persian Gulf
wars. But she has seen a few Iraq war veterans, all of whom had clean
histories before joining the military but started getting into trouble
after they returned.

One of them is Carlos Lopez, 26, who returned to Orange in 2004 after
a four-year stint in the Marines and struggled to readjust to civilian
life.

Haunted by memories of friends who died in Iraq, he was prescribed
antidepressants, fell in with a bad crowd and started using cocaine.
He was convicted of a possession charge in 2005. In 2007, Lopez was
arrested for drunk driving, a violation of his probation. That's how
he landed in Lindley's courtroom.

"It's been a morale booster for me that there are so many people in
the legal system who are there to help me," said Lopez, a construction
estimator.

Colorado Springs has been distressed by a number of cases involving
soldiers from nearby Ft. Carson who have returned from Iraq only to
get into legal trouble. Soldiers from one brigade alone have been
charged in eight homicide cases in the last two years.

Alvarez, a therapist with the Army's Wounded Warrior Program, recalled
some of his more serious cases: a warrant officer who choked his dog
to death in front of his young children; a soldier who fought
violently to pry a shotgun from his wife's hands so he could kill
himself.

"What I keep finding is a pretty normal person, a pretty
happy-go-lucky human being who'd go off to war and come back broken,"
said Alvarez, a former Marine.

Another ex-Marine teamed up with a seasoned court administrator to
open the veterans court in Tulsa, Okla. After hearing of the Buffalo
court, the two did some quick research on their local population. They
found that Oklahoma has among the most veterans of any state.

Then, Matt Stiner, now an aide to the Tulsa mayor, went to local posts
of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. Over beers and
shots of whiskey, he persuaded members to volunteer as counselors and
mentors for the court. He knew that veterans would be helped by "the
camaraderie of being a veteran."

"When I was in the Marine Corps, we talked about stuff," said Stiner,
who left the Marines in 2004 after a tour in Iraq. "Now that I'm out,
that's gone. There's a lot of isolation."

Being in a courtroom full of veterans makes a difference to Ira Banks,
60, a Vietnam veteran who was arrested on a charge of marijuana
possession. "We're not in with the rest of the crowd, who are just
different than we are," he said.

Judge Smith said she had to be extra solicitous of the veterans
because they try to hide their problems under a stoic exterior.

"The military personnel, they're less likely to ask for help, they're
more likely to tell me everything's fine," she said.

Smith sent Paul Haggerty to jail a couple of times early on. Now the
former paratrooper is clean and a veterans court success story.

Haggerty, 37, said he dislocated a shoulder and inhaled poison gas in
training exercises in the U.S. and Kuwait during the Gulf War. The VA
gave him painkillers of escalating strength, and he gradually became
addicted. He would run through his 30-day supply of OxyContin in five
days and go to the streets to buy more.

Last year he became so desperate for cash that he stole lawn mowers
from outside Home Depot and Lowe's. That landed him in Smith's drug
court, and he went with her when she opened the veterans court in
December.

The difference between the two courts is striking, Haggerty said.

"In drug court, the atmosphere is down. People don't want to get
sober, they're there to stay out of prison," he said. "In veterans
court, you have a sense of pride. You don't feel like you're going
through this alone."

-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org