TRI In The News

Detained Marine Veteran Moved to Salem VA Hospital

From The Richmond Times-Dispatch

Original article available here

HOPEWELL, Va. --
Brandon J. Raub, the 26-year-old Marine Corps veteran who was detained involuntarily last week after federal and local officials questioned him about his Facebook posts, was being moved to the Salem Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Tuesday, his attorney said.

John W. Whitehead, founder of The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville-based civil liberties organization, filed an emergency motion in Hopewell General District Court to keep Raub at John Randolph Medical Center. Special Justice Walter Douglas Stokes, who on Monday ordered Raub held for up to 30 additional days, denied the motion Tuesday afternoon, Whitehead said.

Stokes said in the hearing Monday that Raub would get better care in a VA hospital and that the Hopewell center where he had been held since Thursday was only appropriate for a temporary placement, said Raub's mother, Cathleen Thomas.

Whitehead said hospital officials indicated that Raub could not be kept in a closer VA hospital, such as the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, without voluntarily committing himself.

Thomas said Tuesday night that she was disappointed to learn her son was being moved. "Obviously, I'm not happy about it," Thomas said. "It's three hours away from me."

Raub was questioned at his Chesterfield County home by officers with the FBI, Secret Service and Chesterfield police on Thursday. The FBI said it had received complaints about "threatening posts" on his Facebook page.

An Aug. 13 post said, "Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads." Raub also accused the government of perpetrating a "great amount of evil." "The day of reckoning is almost at hand," an Aug. 5 post on his Facebook page said. His attorney said many of the things he wrote on his page were song lyrics.

Chesterfield police said in a statement Monday that county mental health crisis intervention workers had recommended that police take Raub into emergency custody so that he could be evaluated.

A county mental health official determined Raub should be held under a temporary detention order, and he was transported to the Hopewell center.

Thomas said her son is sane and does not pose a threat, suggesting that First Amendment rights had been violated. She added that her son, who served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, does not own a gun.

Whitehead said he plans to file an appeal in Hopewell Circuit Court of Stokes' decision to commit Raub for up to 30 days. The veteran's move to a Salem hospital will complicate the appeal, Whitehead said.

"It makes it very difficult for us to see him and talk to him," Whitehead said.

Whitehead said Raub is worried about being isolated. "He doesn't want to go," Whitehead said. "He's alarmed."

He said Raub doesn't want to be medicated and worries that the move will make it harder to avoid being forcibly medicated.

"This is not how justice in America is supposed to work — with Americans being arrested for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights, forced to undergo psychological evaluations, detained against their will and isolated from their family, friends and attorneys," Whitehead wrote in a statement. "This is a scary new chapter in our history."