Senate panel gives Army OK to compensate wrongly jailed veteran

May 1, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Senate Armed Services Committee today acted to right a past wrong by the Army, when it approved a measure giving the military the authority to award interest on back pay owed to Sam Snow, a wrongly imprisoned Orlando-area World War II veteran.

The panel included the language, sponsored by Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, in a broad defense policy bill. 

“We’re trying to do the right thing here and get the Army to provide Mr. Snow with just compensation,” Nelson said.  “Sam deserves more than just an apology and a few hundred bucks for the time he was wrongly imprisoned in a military jail six decades ago.” 

The case of the Leesburg, Florida veteran first came to light in October of 2007 when the Army admitted it had made a mistake in wrongfully convicting Snow and 27 other black soldiers of participating in a 1944 riot at Seattle’s Fort Lawton that resulted in the lynching of an Italian prisoner of war.

The military gave Snow only $725 in lost pay for the year he’d spent in prison.  Paying Snow in today’s dollars would amount to about $8,000 – or, about $80,000 with interest.

Nelson and U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott filed legislation in January to force the military to award interest on any back pay owed to Snow, and to any others in similar circumstances who have convictions overturned by the courts or Army’s Board for Correction of Military Records.

During a February hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Nelson questioned Army czar Pete Geren about the treatment of Snow.

“It seems to me under equity and fairness … that somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon [ there is ] the ability through equity and fairness to adjust $720 in back pay,” Nelson said. “It is hard to believe that in the Department of Defense that there is not discretion there somewhere to correct this wrong.”

Geren replied, “It is a travesty of justice,” but “under the current statutory framework we are prohibited from deviating from that schedule.”

So Nelson began working to change the law.  His measure passed in the defense bill Thursday now goes to the full Senate for a vote later this year.

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