Judges Cite Wartime Stress in Granting Leniency to Veterans
Federal sentencing guidelines provide that “good works” such as military service are not ordinarily relevant when a judge weighs whether to impose a penalty lower than the recommended range.
But that hasn’t stopped federal judges from citing the psychological trauma experienced by veterans when imposing more lenient sentences, the New York Times reports.
Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman has noticed the trend. “More and more courts are noticing and asserting, in a variety of ways, that there seems to be some relevance to military service, or history of wartime service, to our country,” Berman told the Times.
The story gives some examples. U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers sentenced Timothy Oldani, a former Marine who lives in West Virginia, to only five months in prison for selling stolen military equipment on eBay, despite guidelines that called for a sentence of up to five years. Oldani was suffering from traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress syndrome.
In another case, U.S. District Judge John Kane considered military service when he sentenced a corrections officer to probation instead of prison for taking a bribe to smuggle tobacco into prison. The defendant, a Colorado resident who had been an Air Force firefighter, had “returned from the war, but never really came home,” Kane wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Meanwhile at the state level, special courts are being created to help veterans caught up in the criminal justice system. The idea is to divert veterans accused of minor crimes into drug treatment or job training, allowing them to avoid jail time or fines.
Related coverage:
ABA Journal: “Jurors Should Have Heard of Veteran’s Stress Disorder, Supreme Court Rules”
