Similarly, a jury never heard adequate information about the service-related trauma of former Marines John Hummel, who was executed by Texas in 2021, or John Thuesen, who currently sits on Texas death row. A court recommended a new sentencing trial for Mr. Thuesen in 2015, ruling that the Veterans Administration did not properly treat his PTSD and his lawyer had failed to explain the meaning of Mr. Thuesen’s PTSD or its effect on his behavior. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declined to grant a new trial, and Mr. Thuesen remains on death row.
Three other men executed during the four-month period last winter had also served in the Marines, while a fourth had served in the Army and Army Reserves. Oklahoma executed former Marines Benjamin Cole and Richard Fairchild in the fall of 2022, both of whom were convicted of the murders of young children under their care and showed significant signs of mental illness. Texas executed former Marine John Henry Ramirez on October 5, 2022. On February 7, 2023, Missouri executed Leonard Taylor, who served in the Army and Reserves for six years as a light-wheel mechanic and generator repair expert, and whose father had also been a veteran. Mr. Taylor consistently maintained his innocence in the murder of his girlfriend Angela Rowe and her three children, and evidence showed that he was in another state during the time period the medical examiner originally stated the crime occurred. By the time of the trial, the medical examiner had changed his assessment to fit a window where Mr. Taylor was still in town; pathology experts contested this second finding. Mr. Taylor became involved in the drug trade after his military service and believed that a rival may have targeted Ms. Rowe and her family due to his activities.
However, several veterans have won recent relief in death penalty cases or had the death penalty taken off the table in part due to their military service. On October 19, 2023, Frederick Hopkins was sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty in the murder of two police officers. Mr. Hopkins, a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran, had set up a “sniper’s nest” in his home in South Carolina and fired at police officers approaching to serve a search warrant for his son. Mr. Hopkins had received medals for marksmanship during his service before he was medically discharged in 1977. He had seen doctors many times over the years with symptoms of PTSD, and one opined that Mr. Hopkins showed early signs of dementia before the killings. Mr. Hopkins said that during the shootout he was responding to memories of a Vietnam firefight in 1970 where 27 men in his unit perished. “While [PTSD and dementia] can in no way ameliorate the tragedy of his actions I firmly believe they provide a genesis for the explosion which resulted in the death of these two officers,” said David Ferrier, an investigator who works with veterans and reviewed Mr. Hopkins’ records. Victims’ families and survivors of the shooting supported a life sentence, citing Mr. Hopkins’ advanced age, and prosecutors promised not to seek the death penalty after Mr. Hopkins agreed to plead guilty.
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