TAMPA, Fla. — On Oct. 1, 2013, the 13th Judicial Circuit Court launched a Veterans Treatment Court. Since then, more than a thousand veterans have graduated from the program and turned their lives around.
The man leading the charge is retired Army Colonel DJ Reyes, a combat veteran with a dogged determination to help soldiers navigate life after war.
"We've had veterans that have come through that were actually my soldiers in combat in Iraq," Reyes told ABC Action News reporter Michael Paluska. "They now came back years later as defendants. It broke my heart to see that. But it gave me more resolve and focus to say, this is what I'm going to do; I'm going to get you off this battlefield. The battlefield has just changed. It's now on our shores, and the enemy is very resilient, and oftentimes, the enemy resides within the veteran. We know this, but we're not going to leave you behind, and we're going to help you, but you have to help yourself too. It's not a handout; it's a hand up."
In June, Paluska profiled Reyes and the Honorable Michael J. Scionti, the judge who now presides over the 13th Judicial Court Hillsborough County.
According to a 2021 report by the United States Sentencing Commission, "The Department of Veteran Affairs estimates that there are more than 19 million Americans who are veterans. Since 9/11, almost four million Americans have served in uniform, with about 2.5 million deployed overseas to a combat zone. As of end of 2016, the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that there were 107,400 veterans in federal and state prisons, including local jails. Over 10,000 veteran offenders were in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the end of 2019, accounting for almost six percent of all BOP inmates."
The program is a success at the state level. Now, with the help of criminal defense attorney Michael Maddux, Reyes is expanding the VTC into federal court.
"He's [Maddux] the legal guy. He understands the legal framework. He understands, especially the players," Reyes said. "It's really important now because now we're upping our game. We're moving up to the NFL, so to speak, where we're coming into the federal court system."
Over the past few years, Maddux and Reyes have worked together to launch a pilot program to introduce magistrate judges to the program and process. Recently, all the players in federal court voted to green-light a version of the Veterans Treatment Court in the United States Middle District Court of Florida.
"There is no federal VTC right now in Florida," Reyes said. "Once we set this up, we will be the first in the U.S. Middle District of Florida, but, then first in Florida, I will tell you there are six other such federal level veteran treatment courts across the nation, in six different states."
Maddux said the program would be a game-changer for his clients.
"For my colleagues as criminal defense lawyers, to be frank, we can be beaten down a lot, and this provides us a chance to feel great about the outcome that the trauma of the arrest or entering the criminal justice system ends with your client being in a better place. That's a dream come true stuff," Maddux said. "The system is actually empowering them to have their best lives and find their best selves. We have the opportunity to bring from state court, where they've had this stellar success, and then bring it into the federal courts, where we're encountering vets. What Colonel Reyes is doing is creating a full package of mitigation services to de-escalate the behavior and to bring out the goodness and the true character of these individuals so that the court, at final sentencing, can bring all the totality of factors together and provide a sentence that shows their true full character."
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