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 About 300 of the roughly 3,000 inmates on America's state and
federal death rows are military veterans and the majority suffers
PTSD from serving in the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars, according to
the study from the Death Penalty Information Center, which is
opposed to capital punishment but whose data is used by those on
both sides of the debate. The study was based on data from states
holding half the U.S. death row population.
Defense lawyers frequently fail to realize when their client is a
veteran, according to the report's author, Richard Dieter.
"If you have intellectual disabilities you can't get the death
penalty, if you're under 18 you can't get the death penalty. With
PTSD, you can get the death penalty and sometimes it can be used
against you," Dieter said.
Dieter hopes his report will trigger closer scrutiny of how the
death penalty is used against veterans.
 Neither the Defense Department nor the Justice Department’s Bureau
of Justice Statistics track veterans on death row.
About 31 percent of Vietnam War veterans and 10 percent of Gulf War
veterans suffer from PTSD, according to the National Institutes of
Health.
Joe D'Ambrosio was in the process of re-enlisting in the U.S. Army
in 1988 when he was arrested and wrongfully convicted of murder in
Ohio, joining many other veterans on death row.
"There I was, willing to give my life for this country, and they
took every single right I had," said D'Ambrosio, 54, who was
exonerated in 2012.
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Death sentences and executions have decreased substantially in the
United States over the past 15 years, with just 73 death sentences
handed down in 2014: the lowest number in the four decades since the
Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.
The decline is due in part to the high costs of trial and appeals,
with prosecutors in several states steering clear of cases where
mental illness may be a factor because of the likelihood of a
lengthy and expensive legal process.
In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a
Korean War veteran who killed an ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend,
finding his attorney deficient for not investigating the veteran's
combat service and mental illness.
But Georgia this year executed a Vietnam War veteran who qualified
for 100 percent disability due to PTSD, Dieter said.
(Reporting by Julia Harte in Washington and Jim Forsyth in San
Antonio; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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