JOHN DAY, OREGON -- Later, after the defense attorney wept and the judge put away his robe and the jurors drove home in the fading light, the consequences of war hung over this town of 1,845 like wood smoke on an autumn eve. . .

War has changed the Oregon Army National Guard, which has deployed troops on 8,400 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. It turned the state's emergency volunteers into combat veterans. 

And last month, a Grant County jury considered how much war changed Jessie Bratcher. For the first time in Oregon, and among the first cases nationwide, post-traumatic stress from serving in Iraq was the defense for murder. . .

The state needed to prove only that Bratcher intentionally killed Medina, a crime that carried 25 years in prison. 

The prosecutor scoffed at the argument that "anyone who serves in the military is a trained killer who we cannot trust. That is not the case. The vast majority of young people who serve are good, honorable people who contribute to society." 

The defense claimed Bratcher was either guilty only of manslaughter -- unable to stop himself because of an extreme emotional disturbance -- or that he committed murder but was legally insane due to a mental disease or defect, PTSD. The judge could then sentence Bratcher to psychiatric care instead of prison. 

Late on the seventh day of the trial, defense attorney Sario stood. At 65, he was almost 25 years older than the prosecutor and on his third career. The son of a Finnish mathematician who immigrated to teach alongside Albert Einstein, Sario had been a forester and an assistant prosecutor before taking the defense job in Grant County. Ninety percent of his cases pitted him against prosecutor Joslin. A community theater director and actor, Sario opened the defense by calling the case a Shakespearean tragedy. 

"And it ends as Shakespearean tragedies do: everyone loses." 

He closed with the words of 20th-century writer Kahlil Gibran: "The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked." 

Sario asked the jury: "Is this what we want to do with the young men who volunteer to serve our country?" The jury quickly split between those who believed Bratcher was guilty of murder and those who believed he was mentally ill. . .

The president of the National Veterans Foundation said its crisis hot line has received more domestic violence calls. But foundation President Shad Meshad  predicted that the full impact of Iraq and Afghanistan lies ahead. Meshad, whose pioneer work in PTSD helped create the VA's Vet Centers, said most violent crime by Vietnam vets didn't happen until the 1980s, well after that war ended. He expects that deploying for multiple tours, common to Iraq and Afghanistan, will drive numbers higher. 

"I see a tsunami coming," he said.

Read the full Oregonian story by Julie Sullivan

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