Story out of Fayetteville, North Carolina:
Standing before Judge Lou Olivera was a retired Special Forces Green Beret sergeant who was in Cumberland County veterans court on April 12 for violating probation.
"Every two weeks we go to veterans court, and my urinalysis test had come back positive," Joe Serna, 41, says. "I denied it at first."
But Serna later came clean and told the judge he had been dishonest with the court.
Olivera sentenced Serna to a night in lockup and told him to report back to court the next day for incarceration.
Olivera had hoped to have Serna serve his time in a holding cell at the Fayetteville Police Department, but Chief Harold Medlock told the judge the cell is now used for storage.
"But I'm friends with the chief of police in Lumberton and called him, and he said he would call the Sheriff's Office and they were willing to do it," Medlock says.
Serna reported for his punishment, where he was met by the judge.
"When Joe first came to turn himself in, he was trembling," says Olivera, a veteran, too, who served in the Gulf War. "I decided that I'd spend the night serving with him."
Mostly, from five in the afternoon on April 13 until 6:30 a.m. the next day, the judge and the veteran talked about their respective military service, Serna's post-traumatic stress disorder from three tours of duty in Afghanistan and how the inmate could turn around his downward spiral that had resulted in a driving-while-impaired charge and other serious traffic offenses. Cont.
Story from - fayobserver
Image from - Wikimedia Commons
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