BELCHERTOWN - In what the plaintiffs' lawyer said could be a ground-breaking settlement, the U.S. government has agreed to pay $350,000
to the family of a former Belchertown Marine who took his own life after returning from Iraq.

Jeffrey M. Lucey was a corporal assigned to a special operations unit in Iraq in 2003. After he returned home later that year he began acting
erratically and suffering from nightmares, according to his family.

In May 2004, Lucey was admitted to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds. The facility discharged him four days later after diagnosing
him with alcoholism and mood swings.

On June 22, 2004, Lucey hanged himself in the basement of his parents' Belchertown home. He was 23. His parents, Kevin P. and Joyce
Lucey, filed a wrongful death suit against the government in U.S. District Court in Springfield, saying it was to blame for Jeffrey's suicide.

Cristobal Bonifaz, the Luceys' lawyer, said he received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice on Jan. 6 calling Jeffrey Lucey's suicide
while under the Veterans Administration's care "a tragedy for the VA and the individual care providers" and offering to settle the case for
$350,000.

In her letter to Bonifaz, Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen L. Goodwin asserts that the government is not at fault regarding Lucey's death but said the
case spawned "a number of important changes" in the VA system, including the hiring of suicide prevention coordinators and an increase in
the number of counselors.

Bonifaz said Thursday that the settlement could clear the way for other ex-soldiers and their families to sue the government over post traumatic
stress disorder, a psychological condition believed to be linked to combat.

According to Bonifaz, the government failed to invoke the Feres Doctrine in Lucey's case. Created by a Supreme Court ruling, the Feres
Doctrine bars people who are injured as a result of military service from suing the federal government.

As Bonifaz explained it, if the government had cited the doctrine, it would have acknowledged that post traumatic stress disorder stems from
service in the military.

"The government was between a rock and a hard place here," he said. "They would have to admit that 300,000 others also acquired PTSD in
the service."

Since their son's death, the Luceys have become active members of Military Families Speak Out, an organization opposed to the war in Iraq. As
the family tells the story, Jeffrey Lucey was eager to join the military after the World Trade Center bombings in 2001. He shipped out to Iraq as a
truck driver but was sent into battle in the town of Nasiriyah in 2003.

At one point, Lucey came upon the body of an Iraqi boy who had been shot to death in the street. A tiny, blood-stained American flag was
clutched in the dead boy's hand. Lucey took the flag and carried it with him for the rest of his life.

Lucey began drinking a lot after returning home later that year, his family said. At Christmas time he confessed to his sister that he had been
ordered to shoot two captured Iraqi soldiers at point blank range. Lucey, who had kept the men's identification tags, threw them on the bed and
shouted, "Your brother is a murderer!"

The U.S. Marine Corps said it has found no evidence that Lucey's story is true.

Kevin Lucey said records show his son told someone at the VA that he was contemplating suicide, but the Luceys were not informed of this.

On June 21, 2004, less than a month after he was released from the VA, Jeffrey Lucey asked his father if he could curl up in his lap. Kevin
Lucey cradled his son that night. When he returned home from work the next day, he found Jeffrey hanging from a self-made noose in the
basement. Lucey was buried with the flag he had taken from the Iraqi boy.

Kevin Lucey said news of the settlement stirred a lot of emotions within the family.

"It's like losing Jeff all over again," he said.

Although the letter from the Justice Department stops short of accepting responsibility for his son's death, Lucey considers the offer and the
changes the government promises to make an acknowledgment that the system failed Jeffrey.

"It still continues," he said. "That's the real tragedy. They've talked but they've done nothing to address the suicide problem."

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U.S. to pay family of Belchertown Marine who committed suicide $350,000