Veterans Court Program Coming to LA

Los Angeles - On Monday, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge will start hearing criminal cases against military veterans charged with nonviolent felonies.

The pilot program is meant to give a second chance to veterans who may have gotten into trouble in part due to conditions related to their service, such as post-traumatic stress syndrome, brain injuries and other mental conditions, the Daily Breeze reported.

Orange County has a similar program, which mirrors other veteran courts that have sprung up across the nation.

"This is long overdue," Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan, who will preside over the court, told the Daily Breeze. "Everybody's concentrating on soldiers right now returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, but I'm not sure that these guys are getting the kind of care they ought to get."

The veterans court will start with a maximum of 50 cases at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles.

All military personnel will be eligible.

Many of the cases are expected to be drug- and alcohol-related. Research suggests that veterans often self-medicate to numb the pain of war experiences.

Tynan now oversees the county's drug court, also a specialty unit intended for those whose crimes are primarily a result of addiction.

The idea is get the defendant into treatment, as opposed to a jail cell.

Some defendants may be referred to Veterans Affairs, which runsoutpatient and clinical care facilities in Long Beach, Lancaster and West Los Angeles.

Veterans will be supervised for a set period. If they violate conditions of the court, the severity of penalties will increase, the Daily Breeze reported.

The first court of the kind was started in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2008, and so far none of the veterans who completed the program committed new crimes, officials said.

Federal lawmakers are looking to pass legislation that would provide funding for treatment and court costs, the newspaper reported.

The VA estimates that 131,000 veterans are homeless on any given night, a situation caused largely by mental illness and substance abuse.

Torrance-based Deputy District Attorney John Lonergan, a colonel in the Army reserves, helped set up the local pilot program for veterans.

"These men and women are pulled away from their families for a year or more," he told the Daily Breeze. "They are under constant stress, under the microscope, and they come back and face broken marriages and other difficulties. ... People are finally recognizing the need to treat these individuals. We don't want to relive these issues from Vietnam."