Shane’s Law

Fall 2008. OWVA counsel Jesse Barton and I were choosing what veterans needed from the next session. One answer: a way out of the courtroom for the ones who came home wounded in ways no one could see.

It went in as HB 3396 in 2009. The district attorneys balked. It died.

OWVA kept working, with the district attorneys, the defense bar, the Oregon Anti-Crime Alliance, Oregon Partners in Crisis, the Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force and the Oregon Law Center, until there was a bill everyone could sign. The price of agreement: judges lost their part. District attorneys kept theirs — the discretion to send a service member or veteran to a supervised program instead of prosecution.

February 2010. The Senate passed it 30–0. In the House, the presiding officer named Shane Hornbeck, an Iraq veteran, sitting in the gallery. The whole chamber stood for him. Then it voted, 55–2.

The governor signed it March 4, 2010.

About 500 veterans a year sent to treatment instead of prison. est.

The Foundation for Oregon’s Veterans Treatment Courts

I have always considered Shane’s Law foundational to the development of Oregon’s veterans treatment courts.

Our original 2009 legislation recognized that veterans suffering from service-related PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and other conditions sometimes needed treatment rather than conventional criminal prosecution and incarceration. We sought to give both prosecutors and judges the authority to recognize those circumstances.

The legislation that became Shane’s Law established expanded prosecutorial diversion authority in 2010. In 2013, Jesse Barton helped carry forward the judicial sentencing provisions of our original proposal through SB 124.

Shane’s Law was precursor legislation that helped establish the foundation for Oregon’s veterans treatment courts. It brought legislative recognition to an important principle: that military service and service-related injuries can be relevant to how our criminal justice system responds to veterans.

I believe that without Shane’s Law, Oregon’s veterans treatment courts might never have developed—or their establishment might have taken decades longer.

What began as an effort to change how prosecutors and judges responded to veterans with service-related injuries helped establish a foundation for a different approach to justice.

And that is precisely why veterans must advocate for one another. A legislative initiative does not necessarily end when its original sponsors leave the process. Others can carry it forward, expand its reach, and turn its principles into institutions that serve veterans for generations.