Vietnam vet to be executed in Georgia Tuesday

A clemency hearing held Monday was 66-year-old Andrew Brannan's last hope for escaping execution Tuesday. In the end, his defense failed to convince Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles that his death sentence should be commuted to life in prison, based on the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) his defense team says he suffered after his military service in the Vietnam war.

Brannan's family was "profoundly disappointed," according to a statement released by the family's attorneys. While conceding that "[t]he death of Deputy Sheriff Kyle Dinkheller was a terrible tragedy," the statement read, "Executing a 66-year old decorated Vietnam veteran with no prior criminal record who was seriously ill at the time of the crime only compounds the tragedy."

Brannan will be executed at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, in Jackson, Georgia, after 14 years on death row.

Seventeen years ago, Brannan was speeding down a highway in Laurens County, Georgia, at 98 miles per hour, when 22-year-old Deputy Sheriff Kyle Dinkheller pulled him over.

Video (note: this video contains violent content) from a camera mounted on the officer's patrol car showed Brannan dancing and waving his arms in the street. "Shoot me, shoot me!" he yelled. Then he pulled an M-1 carbine from his truck and shot Dinkheller at least nine times.

The jury rejected Brannan's insanity plea at his 2000 trial, found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to death.

Brannan exhausted every legal avenue: three appeals, four petitions, and five motions. Death penalty expert Dudley Sharp told CBS News that judges often overturn death penalty cases, but the strength of the evidence in the video would be difficult to refute. Sharp said, "The guy had a gun in his car. The guy made a conscious decision to go back and get his gun, and he made a conscious decision to kill the police officer."

Brannan, who volunteered for duty in the Army in 1968, was stationed near the Laotian border as a Forward Observer and was responsible for directing artillery fire toward enemy targets. A fellow Vietnam veteran, Ray Chastain, wrote to the clemency board on Brannan's behalf, noting, "During the period when Lieutenant Brannan served, the Forward Observer had the shortest life expectancy of any category of soldier in Vietnam."

His current lawyer, Joseph Loveland, blamed Brannan's first lawyer for the death sentence -- for failing to bring up Brannan's PTSD from his experience in Vietnam. "It was incumbent on Andrew's lawyers to present all of the mitigating evidence concerning Andrew's combat service, including first-hand accounts of the horrors that he witnessed and his decades-long, unsuccessful struggle to deal with the effects of that experience," said Loveland, a senior trial lawyer at King and Spalding, an Atlanta law firm.

Brannan's other attorney, Brian Kammer, is the executive director of the Georgia Resource Center and has been defending veterans for 20 years. "I have never seen a capital case in Georgia with a veteran found 100-percent disabled by PTSD due to combat trauma at the time of his crime, much less one that has gotten to the point of imminent execution," said Kammer. "I know of no cases like Brannan's, with documented, severe combat trauma."

In 1991, Decatur Veterans Affairs diagnosed Brannan as 100-percent disabled by PTSD, according to his current defense team. A diagnosis of bipolar disorder followed five years later. And Brannan's attorneys say that at the time of the shooting, in 1998, Brannan was not medicated, a fact that was not mentioned in the original trial.

During Brannan's first trial in 2000, the state questioned the extent of Brannan's combat experience and its consequences for his mental health. A court-appointed psychiatrist declared Brannan sane, while his own psychiatrist was not called as a witness.

Trial documents show that District Attorney Ralph Walke dismissed PTSD as a legitimate factor. "I contend everybody's got a little bit of PTSD" Walke said then. "We've all been through some kind of trauma or another."

Brannan's supporters argued that both the medical and legal views of PTSD have changed dramatically in the last 15 years. PTSD is now recognized by clinicians and is regularly treated, especially in veterans, said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. He criticized Georgia's pursuit of the death penalty against Brannan. "His service to his country and his disabilities would be front and center at the trial," said Dieter, and he said that allowing the execution to go forward was "a disgrace."

Kirk Dinkheller, the father of the slain deputy, also testified at Monday's hearing. He opposed Brannan's clemency petition. In a recent Facebook post, he wrote, "January 12, 2015 it will be 17 years since my son Kyle was murdered in the line of duty and on January 13, 2015 his killer will finally be held accountable." He continued, "Nothing will ever bring my son back, but finally some justice for the one who took him from his children and his family."

Brannan's lawyers will file an appeal to the Georgia state Supreme Court on Tuesday morning and expect a decision within a few hours. If that appeal is denied, they will take their case for a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If that fails, Brannan's fate will be sealed. "[It] may be lawful to carry out this execution," said Dieter. "But if Brannan was tried today, he probably would not receive the death penalty."

Brannan will be the first death row inmate executed in 2015.