Key points:
- Military veterans and attorneys urge Gov. DeSantis to stop executing veterans on Florida’s death row.
- Over 100 veterans sign letter to DeSantis, citing it is a failure of duty to execute mentally wounded combat veterans.
- Veterans comprise 10% of death row population, twice their general population representation.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Military veterans and capital defense attorneys gathered this week to make an urgent plea to Gov. Ron DeSantis: stop the execution of veterans on Florida’s death row, including Kayle Bates, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Aug. 19.
The press conference, which included speakers from across the branches of service, came alongside the release of a letter signed by more than 100 veterans urging DeSantis to honor the sacrifices of those who served.
“To execute a veteran who was broken by war and left without adequate care is not justice,” the letter said. “It is a failure of duty. It is the final abandonment.”
Capt. Art Cody, U.S. Navy (ret.), director of the Center for Veteran Criminal Advocacy, told reporters that Florida is targeting those who returned home most scarred by combat.
“Florida is preparing to execute its fourth veteran of this year. Each of these veterans have service connected, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, or other service related disabilities, and I say service connected because were it not for the fact they served, they would not have these particular mental health maladies,” Cody said. “Governor DeSantis has shown little compunction in selecting and putting severely mentally wounded combat veterans to death.”
Cody added that veterans bring back visible and invisible wounds.
“Such close and frequent association with violent death does not leave one unscathed. There is an expression, it’s very true. In war there are no soldiers,” he said. “Veterans currently comprise about 10% of death row. That’s twice the representation in the general population, and that proportion of veterans to death row is growing. One of the primary reasons for this overrepresentation is what veterans go through, particularly in terms of mental health.”
Sgt. David Ferrier, U.S. Army, a Vietnam veteran and longtime capital defense investigator, described how little the system accounts for veterans’ trauma.
“Only 5% of the U.S. population are veterans. Hence, most of their lawyers have little understanding of what the military is all about,” Ferrier said. “In criminal cases, it’s very common that the only person in the courtroom familiar with the veterans’ experience, familiar with the veterans’ military experience, are the veterans themselves.”
Ferrier said the consequences are critical.
“Veterans comprise 10% of the death row population, which is twice their representation in society at large, and that proportion of veterans on death row is growing,” he said. “Mentally disabled combat vets are no different. In fact, they are perhaps more deserving of societal mercy as their injuries have come about because of their voluntary service in response to that same society’s call.”
He reminded the audience that PTSD is not new, and neither is the state’s neglect of it.
“Although it’s been referred to by many different names over the centuries — soldier’s heart, shell shock, battle fatigue, Vietnam syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder — it has been part of warfare since ancient times,” Ferrier said. “It’s written about in The Odyssey, it’s written about in All Quiet on the Western Front. It’s written about in a variety of Vietnam oriented books. Such close and frequent association with violent death in combat does not leave one unscathed.”
Ferrier directly urged lawmakers to intervene.
“Florida’s governor should stop executing veterans,” he said. “The legislature should pass legislation banning the imposition of the death penalty upon mentally disabled combat veterans. Executing our nation’s warriors should call for deep soul searching. We owe combat veterans better than what they’re now receiving in Florida’s criminal justice system.”
Tom Dunn, a retired Army major and trial attorney who has represented Bates for decades, laid out the inequities in his client’s case.
“Kyle Bates was my first capital case,” Dunn said. “After graduating from high school, Kyle Bates followed his lifetime dream and he enlisted in the military with the Florida National Guard. He served for six years. He participated in the unit’s activation to quell the race riots in Liberty City in Miami in 1980. He also attended and completed the Army’s rigorous jungle training in Panama. Essentially, his wife said after those two incidences, Kyle was different. He had nightmares. He’d wake up screaming loudly, acting crazy, and not recognizing or remembering [where he was].”
Dunn argued that Bates’ sentence was tainted from the beginning.
“Kyle gave up his right to ever get out of prison and said, I’ll take the life without parole that the legislature had recently passed. But the trial judge said, no, no, no, no. You can’t give up your ex post facto rights. That would be wrong,” Dunn said. “And I said to the judge, your honor, this jury is going to set Kyle Bates to death, not because he deserved it, but because he already served half of the 25 years to life that was their only alternative to death.”
His prediction came true.
“Three hours into deliberations, the jury came back with the note. The note said, are we allowed to recommend life without parole? And the judge says, I can’t answer that question. We know what happened. Nine voted for death, three for life,” Dunn said. “Kyle was sentenced to death, not because he deserved death, but because the jury did not have an alternative that was meaningful.”
Dunn also noted problems with the fairness of Bates’ trial.
“Twice, the courts here in Florida have refused Kyle’s request for DNA testing,” he said. “Moreover, recently we have determined that a relative of the victim actually served on Kyle’s original trial jury. Let me say that again. A family member of the victim served on the jury. When Kyle’s current lawyers asked the courts for permission to interview the juror, the court said 40 years too late.”
“Governor DeSantis has set a gruesome record of executing more people in a single year than any other governor in Florida history,” Dunn added. “Absent intervention by the courts, Kyle will be the 10th person and the fourth veteran executed by Governor DeSantis this year.”
William Kissinger, Airman First Class, U.S. Air Force, a Vietnam veteran and criminal justice reform advocate, spoke not only as a veteran but also as an ex-offender who spent 47 years in prison.
“The advantage that I have here today is that all the previous speakers outranked me in all but one category. I outranked them in one regard. I’m an ex-offender,” Kissinger said. “I served 47 years in one of the country’s worst prisons. I also was a paralegal assigned to death row, so I bring an entirely different perspective.”
Kissinger recalled the lessons of military service.
“When a brother is hurting, when a brother is wounded, you run to him, you put him on your shoulders and you carry him as far as you can towards safety,” he said. But he contrasted that with what he saw in prison. “I found that it’s a little more complicated than that. You pick up those that you want to help. You don’t want to help everybody because, well, you got racial lines and you got class lines and you got money lines and you got political lines.”
He described the day he brought a petition with 4,000 signatures to DeSantis’ office.
“When I did this, it reawakened something in me and it was hard for me to deal with, but it reminded me that when I went down that hall, I was carrying every veteran on death row with me,” he said.
Kissinger also spoke about sitting with a condemned man on death row.
“I was given permission by the warden to spend the last 24 hours of his life with Doby Gillis Williams. Doby, at the time of his execution, was a 39-year-old black man that was tried and convicted by an all white jury with a white prosecutor, a white judge, white sheriffs in the courtroom, and he was terrified,” Kissinger said. “The night before his execution, I stood at the bars with him talking to him, and we had his lawyer on the phone and she was just crying and screaming, Doby, there’s nothing else I can do. I can’t do anything else.”
“Our veterans are in the same shit,” he continued. “We sent ’em to war. They face the horrors of war. They come home and we ignore ’em. Governor DeSantis has had the opportunity four times this year to pick a veteran up and put him on his shoulder and carry him to safety. He’s not doing it. Instead, he’s choosing to rush them to the chamber of death and it’s wrong. It is time to stop executions for everyone, but most especially for our most vulnerable, our most vulnerable are our veterans. They’re the most deserving of our care, our empathy, and they’re deserving of us picking them up and putting ’em on our shoulder and carrying them to safety.”
The letter, addressed to DeSantis and signed by veterans from every branch, invoked the military’s own code of honor.
“The military instills in all of us an unbreakable code of honor: leave no one behind. That obligation does not end at the end of one’s duty. To a great degree that is where it begins for our mentally injured soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen,” it read. “As an Iraq combat veteran yourself, we believe that you know what it means to serve. We all certainly do. We know what it means when no one comes for you after the fight. We know the discipline, the sacrifice, and the silent wounds that follow you home.”
The letter reminded DeSantis of his own words in June when he signed veterans’ health legislation.
“On D-Day and every day, Florida honors those who served our country in uniform,” DeSantis said at the time. “I was proud to support three bills today to further our commitment to veterans. Florida remains the most veteran-friendly state in the nation.”
The signatories countered, “We can never be a veteran-friendly state when our leader is signing off on their deaths at the hands of the State. We urge you now to lead from a place of bravery, to return to the honor code from your service, and to stop setting the executions of our fellow soldiers.”
The speakers also put Florida’s policies in international context.
“On our very, very small planet, there are 144 countries with no death penalty,” Ferrier said. “England, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Scotland — every European country saved one has no death penalty. The one country that does: Soviet Russia. We’re aligned with Soviet Russia in the agreement that we should kill offenders. Not just offenders, but veteran offenders.”
He added that the company the U.S. keeps on executions is chilling.
“There is, however, one country in the Asian subcontinent that has capital punishment and leads the world incidentally in the number of people to execute: communist China. Where else is the death penalty flourishing? In the jihadist states of the subcontinent. Countries like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Just us, Soviet Russia, communist China and the jihadist states. Those are the countries that kill their convicts,” Ferrier said. “A hundred years ago, almost every country I mentioned had a death penalty, but they’ve outgrown it. They have come to the conclusion philosophically, ethically, that the state’s execution of prisoners is revenge, not justice.”
As Bates’ execution date draws near, the veterans said they will continue pressing for a halt.
“We are one of the only four or five countries on our planet that execute people. Veterans are people,” Ferrier said. “And now that I’ve told all of you this, please go tell somebody else.”
