How tough is too tough?

Recently PBS’ continually magnificent Frontline documentary series aired “The Wounded Platoon”, about an Iraq unit returning to their base in Fort Carson, Colorado (you can watch it here ^[1]). Spoiler alert: the transition often didn’t go well. One of the most disturbing portion deals with Jose Barco, a Staff Sergeant with an honorable discharge for medical reasons: burns, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a traumatic brain injury incurred from a car bomb. By all accounts he both served heroically and suffered immensely…and he’s currently scheduled to be in prison for 52 years.

Barco was allegedly at a party, got in a fight, got ejected from the party (in large part for taking out a gun and shooting at the ceiling), drove off, then drove back and fired six shots at the soiree in a drive-by. One shot hit a pregnant woman in the leg. For this he was convicted of two counts of first degree attempted murder (another shot came near a second party-goer). As noted, he was sentenced to 52 years in prison. Just 24 now, he will not be eligible for parole until 2035.

Let the record show that I, like all other innocent bystanders, am totally opposed to random gunfire, but doesn’t this seem slightly insane? You can beat your extended family to death with a hammer and get less time. The documentary showed footage of the sentencing, and incredibly the judge seemed to hold his military background against him, asserting soldiers should know better (even ones with traumatic brain injuries!). And this seems to me a crucial test: as a society, do we have any faith in rehabilitation? This is an extremely young man who showed much promise in the past, who desperately needs counseling and perhaps other medical care…and we throw him away. Even accepting that the judge’s ruling was an honest one — not a sure thing, as there was recently a case where two judges apparently accepted $2.6 million from youth detention centers ^[2] in return for inappropriately imprisoning juvenile offenders — I still find it hard to accept that to preserve the public safety now, we have to inflict this kind of punishment on a man who gave up his youth and possibly his sanity fighting to keep us safe back then.