Sargent is the son of Jane Ellen and Ed Binkley. I know Jane Ellen
from a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder web site of which we are both
members.
Being the Mom of a United States Air Force Staff Sergent, I know very
well that this could be my son Vincent in this picture.
I've pulled some info about Sargent from his web site. Please read this
or go to this web site and read more.
Sarge Binkley needs OUR HELP !!!!!
There are addresses listed at the site help out in a letter writing
effort and also phone numbers to call.
If this were my Vinny, I would be pleading for your support....
and you know what, once you are a military Mom, they ALL FEEL like
my kids.... SO I AM PLEADING !!!!!!!!
If you can't find the time, or don't wish to write a letter, prayers are most
welcome, not only for this young man, but for all who live with the horror
of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
THANK YOU SARGE for your service and I pledge to support you !!!!
Sargent & his Mom Jane Ellen
.
Under California's strict mandatory minimum sentencing laws,
US Army Captain Sargent Binkley is facing at least 12 years in state
prison. If you know Sargent and/or are opposed to mandatory minimum
sentencing, please read the following. You can help.
Update 3/18 Sargent's Santa Clara court date has been
postponed until mid-July, with the San Mateo court date likely to
change as well. This delay gives us more time to push the county DAs to
take a settlement. Your letters and phone calls are helping - keep them
coming!
Sargent Binkley committed two robberies in 2006. These
crimes were desperate attempts to obtain the painkillers he became
addicted to after sustaining injuries while serving abroad. These
injuries were repeatedly misdiagnosed and mistreated by the military
medical system, resulting in Sargent’s downward spiral of addiction. He
harmed no-one, took no money, and turned himself in. Under California’s
minimum sentencing law, no judge can commute his sentence to one more
in proportion to his crime. Sargent has been in jail for over a year
and a half and faces final sentencing soon in Santa Clara County.
We support the elimination of California's excessive mandatory
minimum sentencing laws, which give the power usually reserved to
judges over to District Attorneys. But changing the law takes time that
Sargent Binkley doesn't have. Public pressure is the only thing that
may cause the respective District Attorneys to reconsider; please help
us in this fight by writing a letter or making a phone call as soon as you can.
Two minutes of your time can help persuade District Attorneys Deborah
Medved and Steve Wagstaffe to apply a more equitable and appropriate
sentence, and obtain justice for Sargent Binkley.
About Sargent
Sargent
Binkley was born and raised in Los Altos, California. He attended Los
Altos High School, where he excelled in school while playing on the
football and rugby teams and becoming an Eagle Scout. Binkley’s goal as
a teenager was to work hard enough to enroll at the US Military Academy
in West Point, NY. He succeeded, and matriculated there in 1993. After
graduation in 1997 he entered the US Army, completing the airborne jump
course and the notoriously difficult Ranger training.
Sargent was sent to Bosnia after his graduation, where he served as
a peacekeeper by guarding the mass graves of genocide victims. From
there he was sent to Central America, where he participated in drug
interdiction operations. At one point he was ordered to open fire on a
truck that contained a civilian teenage boy, an act that haunts him to
this day. While on duty in Honduras, he fractured his pelvis and
dislocated a hip. This injury was consistently misdiagnosed by Army
physicians over the next several years, resulting in chronic pain and
an addiction to prescription painkillers.
Sargent was honorably discharged out of the Army in 2002 and
returned to civilian life. He worked for a time until his chronic pain
and addiction destroyed his ability to be productive. He moved back
home with his parents, who paid for a diagnosis by a private sports
physician. The private doctor used a high-resolution MRI and found
tears in the cartilage of his left hip, injuries that the military
medical system had been unable to find. Surgery finally fixed the
problem. After this his prescriptions from the VA were discontinued but
his addiction remained, compounded by a psychiatric diagnosis of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Sargent held up two Walgreens pharmacies in 2006 – one in Mountain
View on the twentieth of January, the second in San Carlos on the third
of March. He used an unloaded gun, harmed no one, and left only with
bags full of painkillers. Shortly after the second robbery he turned
himself in. After a year and a half in custody, he is working his way
through a drug rehabilitation program as he awaits trial.
5 comments:
Deb, this truly is a miscarriage of justice. Our support is going to be needed even more in the time to come for our war veterans of Iraq and Afganistan. I visited and signed the Guestbook and will get a letter out this week. Thank you for your effort to spread this message to others!
Thanks Debbie for your message of support.
I had 4 letters to go out yesterday, but the wind blew them out of my mailbox. I found the 4 of them, but had to put them in new envelopes as the ink got wet in the snow. NOTHING is going to keep these letters from going out in support of Sarge.
As a former Navy medic, I am shocked that his treatment was so slipshod and damaging to him. As a former host parent to 60 teenage drug addicts, I find this push to put this very sick yong man in jail for 12 years horrific.
I am including his story in a book about addiction that I am writing. I spoke to Ms. Medved in the DA's office in California who is handling this case. Mr. Binkley's trial is not yet scheduled, she said. It will be a jury trial.
I am opposed to mandatory minimum sentencing.
Judges are opposing it; some states are sentencing drug users and non-violent offenders to rehabilitation in lieu of prison. Very sensible and lots cheaper.
President Elect Obama and VP Biden are said to be opposed to mandatory minimum sentencing.
A 12 year mandatory sentence for this very ill veteran would be a travesty of justice. I understand that he used an unloaded gun, and that the pharmacist he robbed (only of the percodan, nothing else) is asking for leniency.
I suggest we send letters to PResident Elect Obama requesting sentencing to a state supported rehabilitation facility -- and cc the letter to Mrs.Medved.
while his crime may be called "violent' because he used a weapon, would it require 12 years of imprisonment if all the factors were considered by a judge or jury? Transferringthe power of sentencingfrom a judge to a prosecutor is like goingstragiht to a surgeon when you have a tummy ache. Surgeons want to do surgery; judges want to judge; prosecutors prosecute. Madness.
12 years of hard time is simply punitive. It will not rehabilitate him. It will only destroy a young man who gave us his best. And can continue to contribute to our nation with proper medical treatment.
Mandatory minimum sentences takes away our ability to apply justice fairly. Its a new day -- one that encourages us to seek the better angels in us. This case is a perfect time to start spreading those wings.
A USNAVY former medic and writer
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