More on Veterans Courts

Veterans court takes a chance on violent offenders

September 14, 2010 - In one of Orange County’s traditional criminal courts, the young defendant had been seen as an aggressor who had, without provocation, used brass knuckles to beat a middle-aged man at a gas station.

In Judge Wendy Lindley’s court, the 22-year-old was all of that, but he was also a former Marine corporal who had served in Iraq.

That made all the difference.

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“These guys went off to war and as a result of their service were damaged, and our job is to restore them to who they were,” Lindley said.

Her court in Orange County, near sprawling Camp Pendleton, is one of about 40 specialized veterans dockets that have sprung up across the country in recent years, but Lindley is at the forefront of a new trend for these courts: taking cases involving violent crimes.

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But proponents say it’s an effort to prevent the cycle of recidivism seen with Vietnam veterans over the last 40 years. There are about 1.7 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, and according to a 2009 RAND study, about one in five of them have mental health issues from their time at war. It’s those troops — and their brethren from earlier wars — that veterans courts are designed to help.

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“One of the things we do is look at a person’s history before they served our country,” she said. “If they have no intersection at all with criminal justice, then we conclude that their intersection now is a result of, probably, PTSD, TBI and of course substance abuse as a result of [those conditions].”

That doesn’t mean veterans are cleared of guilt — only that they get a break in sentencing. “I firmly believe we are ultimately responsible for what we do,” Lindley said. {read rest}