Proving PTSD Post-Prison Sentencing, By BILL TRIPLETT

(EXCERPT)

William DiMascio, a Vietnam veteran and an attorney, is a man on a
mission. He has a thing about fairness, which he thinks some of his
fellow veterans have been denied. Big time.

Take, for instance, Commer Glass, an ex-infantryman with the 1st Cav
who saw some of the bloodiest early battles in the Ia Drang Valley.
One night in 1975, Glass took his stabbed and bleeding girlfriend to
the emergency room of a hospital near where he lived in Pennsylvania.
Try as they did, doctors couldn't save her. Glass said he wasn't sure,
but he may have been the one who killed her. He couldn't remember what
had happened other than blacking out - when she was still very much
alive and well. When he came to, he said, she lay there, mortally
wounded.

At his trial the following year, the jury concluded that Glass indeed
was the one who killed her and convicted him of first degree murder.

Almost 30 years later, Glass still maintains he has no recollection of
that fateful evening. Not that it really matters: Even DiMascio
believes Glass "probably" did it. Still, DiMascio thinks Glass did not
receive completely fair consideration at his trial. Glass, he argues,
came back from Vietnam with "a certifiable case of Post-traumatic
Stress Disorder,"which, he acknowledges, in no way excuses or
exonerates Glass from his act. But DiMascio claims it does call into
question whether the given sentence - life - accurately and justly
reflects the degree of conscious responsibility Glass bears.

In the American Psychological Association's Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual, which the U.S. judicial system relies on when defendants claim
some form of diminished psychological capacity as a mitigating factor,
PTSD is recognized as a seriously debilitating mental condition and
therefore merits consideration of lesser culpability. However, the APA
did not recognize PTSD before 1980, the year the disorder first
appeare...

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---------------------------
Otis Willie
Associate Librarian
The American War Library
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com