By RICK CALLAHAN, Associated Press
Copyright © 2003 AP OnlineTERRE HAUTE, Ind. (March 17, 2003 7:34 a.m. EST) - With another war with Iraq looming, the federal government is poised to execute a decorated Gulf War veteran who claims severe brain damage from his exposure to Iraqi nerve gas led him to kill.
Unless President Bush or the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, Louis Jones Jr. will be executed by lethal injection Tuesday at the U.S. Penitentiary near Terre Haute, Ind.
Jones, 53, admitted kidnapping 19-year-old Pvt. Tracie Joy McBride from a Texas Air Force base, raping her and beating her to death with a tire iron.
But Jones has asked the president to commute his death sentence to life without parole, citing what he says is evidence he suffered severe, personality-altering brain damage from exposure to sarin nerve gas in March 1991, after the Gulf War ended.
Jones' attorney, Timothy Floyd, said his client's exposure to the gas, decorated military career and lack of a prior criminal record make him different from the 23 other inmates on federal death row. He said severe brain damage from the nerve gas made him prone to violent outbursts.
"Compared with his whole life story up to that point, it's inexplicable that somebody like him could do something as horrible as he did," said Floyd, a law professor at Texas Tech University. "It's sort of a mystery, but the answer to it is what happened to him over there in Iraq."
In addition to seeking executive clemency for Jones, Floyd has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his execution, claiming the federal death penalty is unconstitutional under a June 2002 court ruling.
Jones would be the third person - after Timothy McVeigh and drug kingpin Juan Garza - put to death by the federal government since 1963. He would also be the second Gulf War veteran, after McVeigh, who faced a federal execution.
Federal prosecutors oppose Jones' clemency request, pointing to evidence of his aggressive behavior before the Gulf War, including four incidents in which he beat up co-workers or fellow soldiers. He killed McBride on Feb. 18, 1995, two years after his honorable discharge from the Army.
McBride's father thinks the gas-exposure argument is ridiculous. Jones alone is to blame for his daughter's killing, he said.
"There were several thousand troops in the same war, and I have yet to hear of any one of them coming home, kidnapping, raping and violently murdering a young lady," said Jim McBride of Centerville, Minn.
Dr. Robert Haley, an epidemiologist with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who has studied illnesses reported by Gulf war vets, said the tests show Jones suffered the most severe form of Gulf War Syndrome.
"There is now a compelling involuntary link between Mr. Jones' neurotoxic war injury and his inexplicable crime," he wrote in a letter to Floyd.
Haley did not examine Jones or testify at his trial. He based his findings on medical records and reports by psychiatrists and neurologists who testified.
A blood test on Jones shows he lacks a common enzyme that would have helped his body metabolize nerve gas, said Floyd. Haley conducted the research behind the enzyme theory.
Jones, who says he was physically and sexually abused growing up in a household of 12 children, joined the Army after graduating from a Chicago high school.
He became a paratrooper with the Army Airborne Rangers and led his platoon into a risky combat jump in Grenada when the United States invaded in 1983. Later, his Gulf War service earned him a promotion to master sergeant and a coveted Meritorious Service Award.
Floyd said evidence that came to light only after Jones' trial shows he suffered severe brain damage from nerve gas exposure. During his trial, defense experts testified Jones suffered brain damage from abuse as a child and post-traumatic stress from his combat tours.
In December 2000, the Pentagon informed Jones that he, along with about 130,000 other soldiers, may have been exposed to low levels of nerve gas wafting from a weapons depot troops destroyed near the southern Iraqi city of Khamisiyah in March 1991.
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