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Georgia Veteran with PTSD Is the First US Execution of 2015

Andrew Brannan was first sentenced to death in 2000 after his involvement in the fatal 1998 shooting of a police officer. Georgia’s Supreme Court denied a final petition against his execution this week.
Photo via Georgia Department of Corrections

Advocates are shining a light on the Tuesday execution in Georgia of a Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder to highlight mental illness issues among vets and how those with PTSD are not protected from the death penalty.

The executed veteran, 66-year-old Andrew Brannan, was first sentenced to death in 2000 after his involvement in the fatal 1998 shooting of police officer Kyle Dinkheller. Georgia's Supreme Court denied a final petition against his execution this week, and also dismissed his attorneys' claim "that, in light of 'evolving standards of decency,' it is unconstitutional to execute a person who suffers from PTSD as a result of serving in combat."

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Brannan, whose execution by lethal injection at 8:33 pm Tuesday was the first in the US in 2015, was "100 percent mentally disabled" and living in a self-made bunker without electricity or running water behind his mother's house when he committed the crime, his lawyers told VICE News.

His sentencing reflects an antiquated ignorance of post-traumatic stress disorder, advocates said today, noting that he was first tried before society had any understanding of PTSD.

"Today, a veteran returning home rated as 100 percent disabled likely would not be facing the death penalty for the same crime Andrew committed," Brannan's attorney Tom Lundin said, noting that the aftermath of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had brought the issue into the spotlight.

Brannan's latest court appeal was in the mid-2000s, and this week Lundin and other advocates — including multiple veterans from US wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan — petitioned for clemency, which was denied.

Attorney Drew Early, a former paratrooper who joined the petition, told VICE News that he was "not opposed to the death penalty" and said Brannan committed a "heinous crime," but said the vet was "severely impaired" at the time of the incident.

"He was irreparably wounded in Vietnam, he just never knew it. He built a bunker… was living with no water or electricity. He never came back from Vietnam," Early said. Brennan also "suffered other issues," he said. His older brother was killed in an Army plane crash, his younger brother committed suicide, and his father died of cancer.

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"This is a tragedy on all sides," Early said of the incident, in which Brannan shot 22-year-old Dinkheller after the officer pulled him over for a traffic violation. Brannan shot Dinkheller nine times in a "shooting battle" between the two men, Early said.

"We get it. This was a heinous crime, the murder of law enforcement," Early said. But Brannan, who was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had not taken his prescribed psychiatric medications at the time, leading him to a state of mental disability, Early argued.

There is no federal protection from execution for vets with PTSD, Lundin noted. A person must be labeled "insane" in order to have such protection, and still a number of mentally ill individuals have been executed in the past few years.

Certain states have recently created protections for veterans — including Georgia, which started a veterans court in 2014 to fully consider the combat experiences that prompt violent actions by ex-soldiers. But the new court was formed too late to aid Brannan, Lundin said.

The Georgia Department of Veteran Affairs declined to comment to VICE News about justice for the state's ex-service members.

With the exception of Brannan's execution, since 2005 veterans have been granted alternate sentences to death, nonprofit news organization The Marshall Project reports.

"As awareness of PTSD has grown, so have the efforts of lawyers to prove a link between criminal behavior and trauma," the Marshall Project says of the general trend.

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One judge recently equated PTSD with "insanity," and another declared that "the United States has a long history of according leniency to veterans, especially those who fought on the front lines."

But the Georgia court decision also reveals the contemporary "limits of the PTSD defense," the group warned.

And Lundin said that despite the nation's seeming progress, Brannan's punishment was unprecedented.

"This is the first time a veteran rated 100 percent disabled from PTSD, and who also suffered bipolar disorder, has been executed," he said.

Ohio Lawmakers Want to Remove Transparency on Executions, So Capital Punishment Can Resume. Read more here.