Combat wounded veteran with PTSD got jail after failing to kill himself?

Failing Corporal Carson: Veteran with PTSD jailed for months after failed suicide

WKYC News
Author: Phil Trexler
June 3, 2019

Rather than help the vet, prosecutors brought what Deseray Carson calls an “outrageous” criminal indictment alleging eight crimes that did not happen to her or her children. Prosecutors also ensured his incarceration with a high bond usually reserved for killers and rapists.

Wife with 7 children left alone to fight zealous prosecutors for mental health treatment

STREETSBORO, Ohio — Army Cpl. Joseph Carson came home from Iraq with a Purple Heart.

PTSD came along, too.

And it all changed his life and the lives of his wife and seven children.

The flashbacks. Nightmares. The daily struggle.

And then came the 191 days he spent in the Portage County Jail - facing over 60 years in prison - after cutting his arm while trying to kill himself on Veterans Day.

His wife, Deseray, spent those six-plus months fighting for his release, pleading with prosecutors that her husband needed treatment, not confinement.

Those prosecutors and police saw it differently. They convinced a judge to hold Carson under a $500,000 cash bond, then charged him with eight counts of felonious assault, one count each for Deseray and their children. He was barred from speaking to his children.

“My whole world stops,” Deseray Carson said. “A man who fought for his country, and was hit by a bomb, and has sacrificed so much, physically and mentally. It’s just heartbreaking what’s happened to Joe, our kids and myself. He just sits in jail. And for what?”

They were all home last November when Carson, 36, became enraged over alcohol. He struck his wife and shoved his son during the tirade, according to family and police reports.

But he did not attempt, the family said, to use the knife to harm them. In fact, no one was injured that day except for the Army vet.
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