Also, a picture of the subject:
Posted on 11/28/2009 5:26:14 PM PST by Steelfish
Did The War Make Him Do It?
Iraq veteran Jessie Bratcher shot the man he was told had raped his girlfriend. An Oregon jury found he had been legally insane at the time because of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Kim Murphy November 28, 2009
Reporting from John Day, Ore. - When Jessie Bratcher's fiancee told him the baby might not be his, that she had been raped two months earlier, he went quiet. The former Oregon National Guardsman hung his head for the longest time. Then he went into the next room, put the barrel of an AK-47 in his mouth and took it out again.
He told Celena Davis not to expect to get any sleep that night. He walked up to her with a pair of scissors and slowly cut off her hair.
Two mornings later, they drove to the hardware store. While Davis waited in the truck, Bratcher went in and bought a gun. He came out, loaded it and asked: Do we go to the police? Or go find the guy?
"Police," Davis said.
Except it was a Saturday, and the main door to the station was locked. Bratcher and Davis didn't know there was an emergency door on the side of the building.
So they headed for Jose Ceja Medina's trailer.
At first Medina, standing on his porch in running shorts, denied knowing Davis. Then he said that they'd had sex, but that he hadn't raped her, and he offered to take care of the baby.
He ended up with six hollow-point bullets in him.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The guy got what he deserved, put me on the jury and see what pops up.
Have sex with a man’s wife when he is off to war and you deserve to be shot
The only question is who gets it- Rape? just him...
If the baby had Hispanic characteristics, Jessie might have been suspicious the baby wasn’t his. The question here is was she really raped or just covering her butt?
It is estimated that some 100,000 GIs will suffer from PTSD as a result of our recent wars. Many will become homeless. Something really must be done to reintegrate our service members.
My husband suffered for years from his Korean War PTSD, tried to ruin our marriage because he didn’t feel he had a right to a decent life because so many of the guys he went to school with had died. Eventually, I discovered “The Primal Scream”, by Arthur Janov. After I read the book I realized that this is what I needed to do to process some trauma of my own, plus the trauma of the marriage. Eventually I got my husband into it. I finally learned some of the terrible things that had happened during his service and that were filling him with guilt and anguish. Finally, he ended up a much better and far less troubled person and our marriage improved. Read the book if you have PTSD or want to help someone who has it.
I’d do the girlfriend for manslaughter for winding up a man was apparently violently mentally ill, and telling him that she had been raped......
Of course, there is no discussion about why someone who already has an "AK47" needs to go out and buy a hand gun (which apparently was handed over to him without a waiting period, background check, etc.) and then ask if he should go to the police...maybe he bought the Kalashnikov for eating and needed a Smith & Wesson for killing well meaning (he'd take care of the kid) recent immigrants.
Loved the utterly weird quote by a "former drill instructor" suggesting a lobotomy to celebrate DEROS.
At least I know the L.A. Times hasn't changed it's opinion of veterans in general and Vietnam veterans in particular.
They should quit selling those hollow point bullets/s
I know someone who only recently started some kinda treatment for PTSD - from the Korean war too.
The difference in him is already remarkable.
Did you read the rest of the article? He saw his best friend crushed to death.
Nope,didn't catch that.So scratch the reference to a "supply depot" from my previous post.
Every sympathy to the soldier, as being stabbed in the back by his wife is a terrible blow. She told him that she was raped, saw the mental anguish this caused him, being unable to protect his wife while deployed overseas defending his country, and for two days, she couldn’t bother to pick up the phone and call police, not to mention the two months before.
Even when he forced the issue, getting a handgun, and intending on going and killing her rapist, she couldn’t think to dial 911. When they arrived at the trailer, she participated in a discussion with the rapist, rather than run to neighbors seeking assistance and police intervention.
The husband gets a pass from me. The wife should be investigated for manslaughter.
What’s wrong with you people? You’re saying some guy can commit pre-meditated, cold blooded murder just because some guy fools around with his girlfriend and you would let him off because of some psychobabble stress disorder? What if the victim was a member of your family? Still think he should be murdered for this?
it was rape, or it wasn't... if not, bad move.
One early case of “innocent by reason of insanity” was Daniel Sickles, who shot and killed his wifes lover. Edwin Stanton was his defense attorney.
After being found innocent, Sickles took his wife back, and that resulted in him losing office and being disgraced.
Sickles went on to be a Corps commander at Gettysburg, confusing some ambiguous orders and getting caught in a cross fire at the “Peach Orchard”. After the Civil War he was instrumental in preserving the Gettysburg battlefield.
http://www.historynet.com/daniel-sickles-an-unlikely-union-general.htm/2
I don’t like this defense, it gives the public the impression that many combat veterans have incapacitating psychiatric problems.
That’s not fair to the vast majority of combat veterans I’ve known that don’t act out like this at all.
Be careful with these numbers. PTSD can be used to take a vets 2nd Amendment rights from him. Now, you may say that this is possibly a good thing. Until you find out that checking the "yes" box for bad dreams/nightmares on a survey can get you diagnosed with PTSD.
How many on FreeRepublic have never had a bad dream? How many here think that you can do the job and never lose a night's sleep? Also keep in mind that servicemembers generally lean more conservative. They are also likely to own personal firearms, and at the very least have nominal training with firearms.
Now strain your imagination real hard and think of an administration that may hat private firearms ownership. Think using tactics such as post-deployment screening forms to disarm large numbers of the population is beyond them?
With or without the PTSD should be found not guilty. You knowingly sleep with, or rape a vet's wife while he's off on foreign shores; you deserve the bullet. And if you're an illegal immigrant to boot, your family should get the bill for said bullet(s).
hat private firearms ownership = HATE private firearms ownership.
yeah get no sympathy for jodies from me. we had a soldier in our unit recently shoot and kill his wife, he is claim pTSD, really last mission was cake, he must have gotten ptsd because they were out of flapjacks at the dfac. but the last year that we have came back we’ve had a few suicides too so right now we catching hell with these touchy feely meetings.apparently 30 or 40 suicide pervention meetings in 2 years is not enough we must have more meetings.
gleeaikin, I am telling you this conflict is nothing like the Korean war, there maybe 100,000 posing they have ptsd. but you did right, I dont think young ladies these days would put forth the effort. I got lucky my wife stuck by me 2 deployments.
It’s VERY common for a woman when caught (or about to be) to allege that she was raped rather than she cheated. From some stories I’ve heard, it is also, sadly, very common for guys away at war to be cheated on by their wives.
The man who “raped” his wife was probably 100 % innocent. You also don’t offer to take care of the kid if you really raped someone, that just sounds bizarre anyway.
The big issue is that he had no way of knowing if it was really rape or not. He may well have killed a man that his girlfriend eagerly bedded down with. No justification for this whatsoever.
Thank you!
This actually goes back to a Men’s rights concept called “Violence-by-proxy.” Essentially, it was more convenient psychologically for the wife here to allege rape (and possibly keep her husband AND get revenge on someone who may or may not have ‘dogged her out’) than it was to tell the truth.
This is known to happen a lot, in fact, wasn’t there a husband who killed a man after his wife said this, a neighbor even—and then it came out afterwards that the wife had lied about the ‘assault?’
This also happens when young men get involved with married/attached women who manipulate the young man’s sense of honor by claiming she is abused—which gives the man a free pass to not only continuing sleeping with her but to go and “get rid” of the problem of the husband still breathing and be “moral” while doing it.
That’s not even including the men who get into fights (deadly ones, sometimes) because he’s egged on by a woman who alleges some slight suffered at the hands of a man that’s often innocent of the charge entirely or whose part is much smaller than that of the malevolent female.
Also remember that a number of women who DONT use a proxy allege violence on the part of their husband, be it that wife of the reverend in Tennessee, WInkler or the late Fred Lane (former Carolina Panther)who was murdered by his bank-robbing and abusive estranged wife. Women (and children) known that alleging abuse will trigger protective instincts in even evil men and that this makes them much easier to manipulate.
I think the wife should be charged with manslaughter. She probably lied (now the man can’t defend himself, he’s dead) and did nothing to break the chain of events that led to the man’s death or her husband’s guilt.
PTSD is an absurd defense in this case, because it’s all about the man PLOTTING to kill a man—it’s pre-meditated, he had NO PROOF and seeing how the woman never called police before-—it’s probably she was lying.
Too many conservatives are willing to give men in the military a pass for their behavior or engage in the liberal slander of the “crazy veteran” without knowing it.
“You knowingly sleep with, or rape a vet’s wife while he’s off on foreign shores; you deserve the bullet. And if you’re an illegal immigrant to boot, your family should get the bill for said bullet(s). “
This is absurd beyond any belief. We don’t kill people months after an alleged crime anymore, unless it’s murder, high treason or certain other particular crimes.
This could also justify a lot of cold blooded murders by merely claiming that someone did something that you have no proof of. IN this case, you have a pregnancy, sure but in others-—all someone would have to do to set it up is to allege.
Also, it’s the WIFE’s duty to resist temptation when the husband is away. To put it on the man is to engage in the most gross double standard, which is why women think they can get away with murder (literally) in these types of cases or falsely accuse innocent men of rape (or of child abuse.)
And if he thought his girlfriend was an innocent victim who had actually been raped, why did he cut her hair off?
not saying it would be justified either way, but if she truly was, it is semi understandable, if she WASN'T raped, he is truly screwed... just sayinif she was, why no rape report at the time???
If he slept with another guy’s wife, especially a serving member of the armed forces, he is hardly innocent.
He shouldn’t have been shot, but I would never vote to convict on any charge above manslaughter, myself.
I married him in 1962, long after his discharge. His significant deterioration began after he was mugged. Ten years of heavy drinking, 15 of alcoholism. I was afraid he might hurt me in and the kids if I left him. He had serious abandonment issues. Was abandoned by a superior officer in the middle of a mortaring. In therapy we discovered that he had been severely burned by a hot water bottle in the hospital shortly after birth. He had a faint scar on the side of his calf about two inches wide and 8 inches long. Thus abandonment meant agony and possible death. It was the Primal processing that enabled us to uncover the very early link. Powerful stuff. He quit drinking in 1991.
Many people who have PTSD now will get worse if they are triggered like my husband was. There is a difference between common nightmares, and the PTSD type. Waking up quaking, sweating, crying out night after night. Sign that help is needed. And yes having guns around can be dangereous. One night my husband was mugged coming home from the bar at 2 am. He roared into the house screaming he was going to kill the guy. While he was in the bathroom unloading some beer, I hid his pistol and called his combat buddy. Then he went out into the street screaming “You want war, I’ll give you war.” Fortunately, his buddy arrived soon after and talked him down.
PTSD is serious stuff RO.
I call BS on this story for the same reasons. There’s more to it than the LS Times bothered to find out.
These young folks coming out of Iraq for example were really all under the gun.. (The same must be said for many of the other Turd world locations our GIs are sent too.)
All at serious risk of death or injury.
The way the war was handled and conducted had them running around on the roads and trails like Game for the enemy to kill using IEDs VBEDs at their leisure..
Their situation Left/Leaves them in terribly vulnerable situations for extended periods of time..
The Navy for example has a very high suicide rate right now.. They are comparing apples to oranges when they say their rates of comparable to civillians..
(they are not at all.. Young fully employed healthy sailors vs older ill, males with drug and/or alchohol, financial and/or familial troubles.) The Navy trying to be relivant in the WOT which is primarily ground based as increased the Operartional Tempo of the Navy tremendously..
Hammering the normal leave/deployment cycles..
Most of those young people will not hear shots fired in anger but their lives are put at considerable hazard and psycological strain nevertheless.
Something we will have to come to grips with.. and understand.
It is not necessary for them to have a knife in their teeth and a grenade in their hand to have suffered significant psychological/emotional injuries.
Stick a normal healthy person (mostly young) in a confined area for an extended period of time.. add the very real possibility of their being killed at random..
Don't discount the impact the very real threat of prosecution and imprisonment for "Overreacting to the threat" poses as well.
Those are some hard rows to hoe.
W
>>You’re saying some guy can commit pre-meditated, cold blooded murder just because some guy fools around with his girlfriend and you would let him off <<
Short answer, yes!
Rape is defininitely NOT fooling around. And treatment is not letting him off.
That the victim was a douche is no defence against murder...
The PTSD thing may mitigate his offence, but it doesn’t excuse it, or allow him to get off scott-free like some people (not you) seem to think it should.
Incidently, I am somewhat sceptical of his defence that he shot the guy in the midst of a PTSD-induced hallucination in which he was back in Iraq and his victim was a threat that needed to be neutralised. If thats the case, it must have been a very long and convoluted hallucination considering he bought the handgun several hours beforehand and then went to confront his wife’s lover with it, which smacks more of an intention to commit premeditated murder to me and then use “PTSD” to try and get away with it afterwards.
If he honestly believed he was a rapist, he should go down for manslaughter, but if that’s the case, so should his wife for setting him off....
But the government must maintain the law. The jury is charged with determining the facts, and, what's more, has the power of jury nullification if they think the law is wrong, or is being unfairly applied.
I was on the jury of a murder trial once. There was no doubt that the defendant killed the man. He claimed self-defense. We let him off. Why? The circumstances, as presented to us indicated that it could have been self-defense. The prosecution presented no evidence that really contradicted that hypothesis. The overall circumstances of the relationship between the two (the vic was the ex-son-in-law), and the fact that the victim had raced down to a diner to confront his ex-wife and her father, in fact was the instigator of the confrontation, all said to us that it was self-defense.
We didn't even consider the murder charge for more than 5 minutes, just long enough to take a preliminary vote. We spent several hours discussing manslaughter, but in the end we decided that there was very reasonable doubt that he was at fault.
did we do the right thing? I don't know. Most of my friends were surprised at the verdict. Evidently there were things that we weren't aware of that had been printed in the paper. But we had to go with what was presented to us in the court. It didn't hurt the defense, probably, that the prosecution's case was not presented well.
However, just because someone is killed, that doesn't mean that someone must necessarily pay for it. Self-defense is a legitimate reason to walk free.
These people (civilian researchers from one of the universities) called and emailed me for months before I finally threatend to turn them in for harassment. Through talking with some of my friends, I found out they only attempted to contact those that were stupid enough to answer 'a certain way.' I thought I was helping them to develop re-deployment classes by participating. At least this was the reason they had provided to our battalion before we took these things.
I know others that have filled out the screening forms at the VA that were later told they filled out the paperwork "correctly" or the VA would be "forced" to notify the county court, which would revoke this person's CCW.
By all means, I fully understand PTSD is a torment to the vet and friends/family. However, some of the reasons/anecdotes I mentioned keep others from seeking help; even just to deal with things in the short term.
And last, but not least, I hope your husband is coping and doing well; same for you. I know my wife had a hard time understanding my need to have the shades drawn (when I first got back from one of the deployments) so the snipers didn't see me..... I know its difficult on the wives because they don't understand, and I don't think they ever fully do.... God Bless.
Yes,I understand that.I understand that simply being in uniform in Iraq or Afghanistan puts you at increased risk of death or serious injury over those stationed at Ft Benning,Camp Pendleton,Andrews AFB,etc.That's why I said I was willing to cut him some slack even if he was assigned to a supply depot rather than gearing up and hunting ragheads.But having never been anything but a REMF myself (rear meaning nothing more dangerous than stateside posts) I recognize that the guys hunting the ragheads have it worse than the supply clerks,if ya catch my drift.
I am sorry to report that after ten years of Alzheimer’s, my husband died in 2005 at age 75. There appears to be a correlation with heavy beer drinking and Alzheimers, although not with wine.
I agree that fear of contacting professional help keeps a number of PTSD suffering soldiers from getting the relief they need. I take part in a free, self-help primaling group in Northern Virginia. Several of us would really like to support military sufferers with PTSD. We have also talked about creating a self-help network for military and their spouses. Since this is an informal group with no “professional” in charge, although some of us have many years of practical experience, there is no danger of stigma for attending. If you know anyone in that region who would like to learn more you can private message me for more information and possible direct contact.
“However, just because someone is killed, that doesn’t mean that someone must necessarily pay for it. Self-defense is a legitimate reason to walk free.”
???
This wasn’t self-defence. He tooled himself up, drove down to were the victim lived and after a brief “discussion” with him, gunned him down....
However, there could be other legitimate reasons for killing someone, although the law perhaps could not take cognizance of them. And no, I won’t elucidate further.
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