Veterans Justice Program racks up decade of 2nd chances for vets

Armando Trujillo was barely 24 when he returned home from the Iraq War in 2003.

“My son was born in March. When I came home, he was 3 months old. I missed his birth,” recalled Trujillo, now 42.

Back home in Bakersfield the U.S. Marine veteran was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and as the war dragged on and the blood of American troops continued to be spilled, he was feeling intense survivor’s guilt.

“I felt bad being safe at home when people were over there dying,” he said.

Trujillo began getting into physical altercations, fighting in public, drinking and driving. Trouble with the law followed.

“One day, they’re in a war zone, the next they’re on the street,” Kern County Superior Court Judge Brian McNamara said of American combat veterans.

“I have no illusions about it,” McNamara said. “It was necessary to respond to this as a problem.”

Enacted by the California state legislature in the 1980s and amended in 2010, Penal Code 1170.9 allows qualified military veterans to undergo treatment as a consequence of a criminal conviction, instead of serving time in county jail or state prison.

The court may order treatment rather than jail time when it finds that an eligible veteran suffers from PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, substance abuse or other mental health problems that are the result of having served in the military.

“The idea is this,” the judge said. “If you do a good job for your country, your country should do something for you.”

In 2010 veterans advocate Vernon Valenzuela brought the idea of starting a Veterans Justice Program to attorney Randall Dickow, who at the time was head of the Kern County

Bar Association’s Indigent Defense Program.

Valenzuela was a professional therapist who focused for years on aiding veterans suffering from PTSD and other conditions.

Now-retired Judge Michael Lewis, a Marine veteran, got involved, as did other local judges, longtime local defense attorney H.A. Sala, the Kern County District Attorney’s Office, the probation department and more.

Dickow, also a veteran, estimates that some 700 vets have benefited from the program, with zero failures.

McNamara says the veterans in the program may be given a second chance, but they are not given a free pass. They each have requirements they must fulfill.

If there’s any group that deserves a second chance, it’s veterans, he said.

“A veteran is someone who wrote a blank check made payable to the American people for an amount

up to and including their life,” McNamara said. “That does not come cheap.”

Trujillo would become the justice program’s first client.

As someone who thought he was “unfixable at 24,” Trujillo’s self-esteem had been crushed. He lost his job as a prison corrections officer. He went through a divorce.

“I was a convicted felon,” he remembered. “I felt about 1-inch tall.”

But as Trujillo began his diversion program, Valenzuela became his counselor and mentor at the Bakersfield Vet Center,

where Valenzuela was director. Trujillo started going to school and earned his bachelor’s degree at Cal State Bakersfield in 2014.

Trujillo became a resource at the Vet Center as helping other veterans became his joy, his vocation. For the past six years he has assisted his fellow veterans at the Veterans Service Center at Bakersfield College.

In 2018, he earned his master’s degree in social work at the University of Southern California.

“It all goes back to the Veterans Justice program,” Trujillo said.