If this is your first time in veteran's court, welcome.

If Mr. Newby would please come forward.

Seth himself enrolled at 20 years old in the army.

He deployed to Iraq twice.

You know, he had try to work on his emotions.

He was stressed out.

He ended up getting some trouble.

Starting after 9/11, I found a difference in the type of cases that would come across my desk.

I could tell when a case involved a veteran because it didn't look like the normal case.

After I came back, things kind of exploded.

It's been a little bit of a scary experience.

I've never been arrested before in my life.

How does a court get us to having this veteran come back to be the contributing member of society that they were when they served?

And we have our mentors Raquib Abduallah.

I served in the Navy as a Seabee, and I also served on the Kitty Hawk Forrestal, and also on the USS Dallas.

I'm glad to be here.

I'm a recent graduate of this court.

I'm also a mentor.

It was an incident that happened at home.

I became physical with my wife, and I just basically snapped.

I realized something was wrong and had been wrong for some time.

I sat in jail for five days.

And then I went through the program through the court.

Raquib, when he first came in, he was, " I don't want anything to do with you."

I mean he sat in the back and he looked straight ahead and was like, "There is nothing wrong with me.

I started learning that, yes.

I do need help.

By the end of that year, he was so proud to have gone through the program.

He's a mentor.

I mean, when he engages them, they stay engaged.

What we're doing today is that we're going out to see a mentee by the name of Wallace.

Wallace's charges were similar to what I had.

No matter what he had went through, he knew he had to change the way he approached the situation with his wife and children.

What's going on, Mo?

Hey how's it going?

Alright It's good to see you.

Thank you.

So how's things been going with you?

Ah, man it's you know, transition.

I know this is sensitive for you.

Can you talk to us about what caused your post-traumatic stress disorder?

Yes.

We're on patrol.

We're in Al-Najaf, Iraq, and this little kid was serious with his territory.

6 or 7 years old.

You know.

One of the, I guess, lieutenants gave the order, so they, you know, fire, and we returned fire.

You know this kid was accurate, but I'm accurate too.

That's the training.

I deal with that to this day.

If I decided to act unbecoming of a man, I can't say I'm a man today.

But what I can say is I feel my growth, and I definitely see a change within myself -Good and went from of course you know homelessness to having my own apartment, now a house.

Like, I'm worth more than what I thought I was.

Good, good, good.

Good to hear that.

We'll look forward to meeting again.

It's been a blessing.

Thank you so much.

I do get calls from veterans, you know, at 2-3 o'clock in the morning.

And, you know, they're going through their challenges.

I understand.

I was a police officer in Chicago, and the community in which I worked in - It was gang infested.

Toward the end of my tour, I shot and killed a kid because he raised a shotgun up on me.

And when he did I fired back.

And that has bothered me more than anything in my life, because I took somebody's life, of a child.

And after the reports were made, I just mentally just wasn't there anymore.

So I did 11 years and I was done.

God has given me a lot.

I do have something to contribute by doing something positive, progressing, moving forward in my life.

People have to have this hope, they have to have this connection, that it's ok for me to admit that I'm hurting inside, and do something about it.

So.

I'm going to cry.

Got four people in jail today.

Nathan and myself will go meet with them in jail make that first point of contact.

We look at all different charges no matter how minimal but we have actually found the vet that was in the most need.

And that little safety net of just looking at every case, caught them before they really got in trouble, kept them from becoming homeless, kept them from a felony.

And in most cases they are doing far more for me in their case than they would in any other regular courtroom.

They are generally with us six months, sometimes up to two years.

Alright.

We asked him to do quite a bit of treatments, and he did everything we asked of him.

It was just like his service, you know, it was honorable, and so he's here today to graduate, so let's congratulate him.

I have this certificate in recognition of your successful completion of the program.

The therapeutic process of a court is the court itself.

People know you and your accomplishments.

They have that certificate to recognize, "Thank you for your service, and thank you for everything you did in this program."

I liked it.

It makes me feel good.

I'm glad that I was able to essentially, conquer my demons.