When a Brother Pulls the Trigger

Ron DeSantis wore the same boots. He trained under the same flag. He knows the silence that follows the blast, the adrenaline that never really fades, the way a man’s soul can fracture without bleeding. He knows what it means to carry ghosts. And yet, when faced with the life of Jeffrey Hutchinson, not a stranger, not a statistic, but a fellow veteran, he chose the pen over mercy. He chose politics over brotherhood. He signed the warrant. A soldier condemning another soldier. As if war had taught him nothing about loyalty, trauma, or the cost of survival. As if the oath they once shared ended at the edge of a uniform.

They both served under the stars and stripes. Both wore the uniform. Both answered the call. But only one came home with sand in his boots, blood on his hands, and nightmares stitched into the lining of his soul. Jeffrey Hutchinson lived the war with a rifle in hand and death all around him. He served in the Army during the Gulf War, not from behind a desk, but from the dirt, where the heat was real, the chaos constant, and survival uncertain. Ron DeSantis also served a Yale graduate with a Harvard law degree, commissioned as a Navy JAG officer in 2004. He advised SEAL Team One in Iraq and worked at Guantanamo Bay, operating in the legal shadows of conflict. A soldier, yes, but with clean hands. One fought with pens. The other with his body. One gave counsel. The other gave everything. And now, the man who never had to pull the trigger in combat has pulled it here, from behind a governor’s desk, signing the death warrant of a fellow soldier. A brother in arms, abandoned and condemned by the very system they both once served.

Jeffrey didn’t come back whole. Like thousands of others, he came back changed, fractured, rewired by fear, loss, and the constant ticking of survival mode. But America doesn’t like its veterans broken. It likes them smiling in parades, not crying in parking lots. It likes their uniforms crisp, not their minds unraveling. Hutchinson carried the war home in his nervous system. He battled PTSD, the kind that keeps you up at night and makes daylight feel like a threat. He asked for help. He slipped through the cracks. He made mistakes. And in a country that claims to honor its heroes, that was enough to seal his fate. They gave him a rifle when they needed him. And a needle when they didn’t.

There’s a ritual in this country. Send them to war. Use them up. Forget them. You see it under every bridge, in every overcrowded VA waiting room, in every veteran sleeping on cardboard with a flag stitched to his jacket. We tell them they’re warriors, then treat them like burdens. We cheer when they deploy, then look away when they beg for help. Jeffrey Hutchinson didn’t fail his country. His country failed him. It failed him when it ignored his trauma. It failed him when it handed him prescriptions instead of healing. And it failed him a final time when it traded compassion for punishment. America didn’t just abandon Jeffrey. It weaponized his pain and called it justice.

Jeffrey Hutchinson’s story is not an isolated tragedy. Across the United States, the death rows are disproportionately populated by military veterans men who once donned the uniform, fought for their country, and returned home to find themselves ensnared by a system that offers punishment over healing. Estimates suggest that veterans constitute at least 10% of the current death row population, translating to over 300 individuals awaiting execution . This stark overrepresentation underscores a grim reality: the nation that trained them to fight has, in many cases, abandoned them when the battle shifted to their own minds.

Consider the case of David Funchess, a Vietnam War veteran who was executed in Florida in 1986. Funchess was the first Vietnam veteran diagnosed with PTSD to be executed in the United States . His service left him with deep psychological scars, but instead of receiving the support he needed, he was put to death by the very government he served.

Similarly, Herbert Richardson, another Vietnam veteran, was executed in Alabama in 1989. Richardson’s experiences in combat led to severe mental health issues, which were largely ignored during his trial. His execution highlighted the systemic failure to address the unique challenges faced by veterans within the criminal justice system .​

These cases illuminate a disturbing pattern: soldiers who risked everything for their country, only to be discarded and condemned when they became casualties of a different war, a war within. The prevalence of PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and other service-related mental health conditions among veterans on death row raises critical questions about justice and societal responsibility. Are we to believe that execution is the appropriate response to the psychological wounds inflicted by war? Or is it a convenient method to erase the evidence of our collective failure to support those we sent into harm’s way?​

The stories of Hutchinson, Funchess, and Richardson are not anomalies; they are symptomatic of a broader, systemic neglect. The death penalty, in these instances, becomes not just a tool of justice, but a symbol of a nation’s willingness to forsake its own warriors. It’s a betrayal that echoes far beyond the execution chamber, sending a chilling message to all who serve: your sacrifice is honored only until it’s inconvenient.​

AI generated Dall-E

And today at the center of this betrayal stands Ron DeSantis, a man who should have known better. A man who wore the same flag on his sleeve, who walked the same sand, who stood close enough to war to smell it. He didn’t just authorize an execution. He signed off on the state-sanctioned killing of a brother in arms. Not a criminal in the abstract. A soldier. A man who once stood ready to die for the same country. A man broken by the very machine that now seeks to discard him like defective gear. DeSantis didn’t just fail Jeffrey Hutchinson as a governor. He failed him as a fellow veteran. He pulled the trigger on someone who once would have taken a bullet for him. That isn’t justice. That’s betrayal with a handshake and a polished boot.

Somewhere, there’s a mother who watched her son leave in uniform and come back with eyes that never looked the same. Somewhere, there’s a photo of Jeffrey smiling in camouflage, long before the system crushed him. There are memories of laughter, of birthdays missed, of phone calls from overseas that ended too soon. He wasn’t just a headline. He wasn’t just a case number. He was a son, a cousin, definitely a brother. Someone loved him. Someone still does. And now they’re being told that his life is worth less because he broke under a weight he never should have carried alone. But he did carry it. He carried it for us. For the flag. For the people who now look away. This isn’t about guilt or innocence anymore. It’s about decency. About whether we can still recognize humanity in those we once called heroes. About whether we have the courage to care before it’s too late.

Jeffrey Hutchinson wore the same uniform this country loves to praise. He stood tall when asked, fought when told, and disappeared quietly when asked to. No parade. No therapy. No second chances. And now, the final chapter of his story is being written in ink and indifference. A date. A needle. A silence. But it shouldn’t end that way. Not for him. Not for any veteran whose only crime was coming home broken from a war they didn’t ask to start.

Because if this is how we treat our soldiers once they’re no longer useful, if this is what awaits the ones who gave everything and came back with nothing  then maybe the real sickness isn’t in them. Maybe it’s in us. In our justice system. In our politics. In our silence.

You don’t have to agree with everything Jeffrey did. You don’t even have to forgive him. But you should see him. You should look at the pain behind the uniform. You should ask yourself what kind of nation sends its young to war, then kills them when they come home too damaged to function. And if that question doesn’t haunt you, it should.

You knew. That’s the difference. That’s the shame. You weren’t some distant bureaucrat playing God from a safe hilltop. You were a soldier. You wore the flag on your chest and swore, like the rest of us, to never leave a brother behind. But when the time came to show what that oath meant, not in theory, not in speeches, but in blood and consequence, you chose cowardice wrapped in paperwork. You didn’t just abandon Jeffrey Hutchinson. You erased him. You looked at a fellow veteran, a man eaten alive by the war you both knew too well, and you handed him to death like a piece of trash swept under your political rug.

You, Ron DeSantis, pulled the trigger with a pen. And worse, you did it knowing exactly what it means to carry war in your bones. You did it not out of ignorance, but calculation. You made your name by standing next to SEALs. Jeffrey made his by surviving hell. You wrote memos. He dodged bullets. And now you stand clean while his name is dragged to the edge of the grave.

But he is not gone. Not yet. His life still hangs in the balance. And while you choose silence, while you choose convenience over courage, we still choose to fight. We speak, we write, we scream his name because someone has to. Because maybe, somewhere, there are still soldiers who remember what it means to serve with honor. Maybe there are still brothers in arms who will hear this cry, stand up, and do what you would not. Save one of their own. Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s popular. But because it’s right.