One Year: The Medal and the Needle – The Execution of Manuel Pina Babbitt
One year.
One year was all that separated the medal from the needle.
The United States government honored him for surviving war. Then executed him.
He survived seventy-seven days of hell. Bombs, napalm, men dying beside him in the mud. He came home. He was supposed to be safe.
So was she.
This is the story of a decorated soldier who survived war, but not what came after. It is a case that forced a nation to ask a question it still has not answered: What does America owe the soldiers it breaks?
By the end of this, you will have your own answer. And it will not be a comfortable one.
The Making of a Soldier
Manuel Pina Babbitt was born on May 3rd, 1949, in Wareham, Massachusetts – a small, coastal, working-class town where opportunity was scarce and hardship was routine. He was one of eight children raised in a Cape Verdean immigrant household. His father was an alcoholic who was physically abusive. His mother struggled with mental illness.
Psychiatric and neurological disorders ran through that family like a current nobody could see but everyone felt.
At age twelve, Manny suffered a traumatic brain injury in a bicycle accident. He never fully recovered academically. He left school after seventh grade, barely able to read or write.
When he was barely eighteen, Manny walked into a Marine Corps recruitment office. The recruiter handed him the standard entrance examination. Manny could not read most of it. The recruiter filled it in for him and passed him through.
Within six months of enlisting in 1967, Manny was in Vietnam.
The Siege of Khe Sanh
He served two full tours. On the fifty-sixth day of the seventy-seven-day Battle of Khe Sanh – one of the longest and most costly engagements of the entire war – rocket shrapnel struck him in the head and hand. He was found unconscious on top of a pile of fallen soldiers and evacuated by helicopter.
He came home.
He went AWOL three times. After the third incident, the Marines discharged him and evicted his family from the military base.
By 1975, he had been formally diagnosed with PTSD and paranoid schizophrenia. No meaningful treatment followed. He drifted into crime, robbing gas stations and vacant homes. In 1973, he was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to eight years. He was later confined to Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he attempted suicide.
After his release, he drifted through Providence, Rhode Island, before moving to Sacramento in September 1980 to live with his older brother, Bill, and Bill’s wife, Linda.
The Victim
On the other side of that same city lived Leah Schendel.
She was seventy-eight years old. A widow. She lived alone in a quiet apartment at Sacramento Manor, a senior citizens’ complex on North Manor Drive in South Sacramento. She suffered from both coronary disease and emphysema. She had relatives nearby and dined with them regularly. In the days just before December 18th, 1980, she had been in Reno playing the nickel slots.
By every account, she was a gentle, private woman living out her retirement on her own terms. Completely unaware of what was moving in her direction.
December 18th, 1980
December 18th, 1980, began like any other day in Sacramento.
Manny Babbitt spent that Thursday morning walking the streets before crossing paths with a woman he had just met. The two of them ended up at the Sticks Bar, where they spent most of the day drinking liquor and beer and smoking marijuana. By the time evening came, neither of them was in any condition to make clear decisions.
Around 9:00 p.m., the woman climbed into a taxi and left. Manny stayed. He moved from the bar to a parked van nearby where a group of men were smoking marijuana. He joined them.
Then he walked.
He made it as far as 21st Street before his body gave out. He sat down on the ground and lost consciousness. When he came to, there was a cigar box sitting next to him. He had no clear memory of how it got there or how long he had been on the ground.
He started walking again in the direction of Bill’s house. That route took him past Sacramento Manor on North Manor Drive.
The Sound in the Night
Inside her apartment, Leah Schendel had returned home around 11:00 p.m. after dinner with her relatives. Her next-door neighbour, Vernon McMaster, had gone to bed around the same time. The complex was quiet. The night was ordinary.
Sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m., McMaster was jolted awake by a sound – a thud coming from Leah’s apartment. He lay still and listened. Silence followed. Then he heard her television turn on. He stayed awake for close to an hour before eventually drifting back to sleep, unsure of what he had heard.
What McMaster did not know was that the sound he heard marked the moment everything changed.
As Manny walked past Sacramento Manor, an oncoming car’s headlights cut through the darkness and startled him. In that instant, according to testimony from his defence attorneys and forensic psychiatrists, his mind did not register a Sacramento street. It registered a combat zone.
He heard the film story of G.I. Joe playing through Leah’s screen door – combat sounds, gunfire, the noise of war bleeding into a quiet California night. He saw dark green and black trash bags stacked beside the building.
To a man whose mind was still partially living in the jungles of Vietnam, those bags looked like the body bags he had loaded onto evacuation helicopters at Khe Sanh.
He entered the apartment.
The Dissociative State
Defence psychiatrists would later testify that Manny was not operating as a conscious, calculating individual at that moment. He was in a dissociative state – a documented symptom of severe PTSD where the mind detaches from present reality in response to a perceived threat from the past.
When Leah Schendel got up to confront the intruder in her home, the encounter turned fatal.
After she died, Manny covered her body with a mattress and tied a cord around her ankle. During his appeals, attorneys presented evidence that this specific behaviour – covering a fallen person and marking the ankle – was consistent with a Marine Corps field protocol used in combat to protect the bodies of fallen soldiers and identify them for evacuation.
It was not the behaviour of someone staging a scene. It was the behaviour of someone who believed he was still in a war zone.
The Cause of Death
The pathologist’s findings were medically significant. Leah Schendel’s official cause of death was cardiac arrest brought on by the physical and psychological stress of the assault.
The pathologist stated clearly that had she not been living with pre-existing coronary disease, the physical force alone would not have been sufficient to cause her death. Her underlying conditions were a direct factor in the outcome – a distinction that would become central to both the prosecution’s case and the defence’s argument about criminal intent.
The Second Victim
The following night, December 19th, a woman named Mavis W. was returning home to her residence on 63rd Avenue in Sacramento. As she pulled into her driveway in her Volkswagen Dasher, she noticed Manny walking slowly near her house.
When she stepped out of her car, he grabbed her from behind, dragged her behind the bushes alongside the property, and struck her until she lost consciousness. He then took money and jewellery before fleeing.
A man named George Wamiria, who had been visiting the property that evening, stepped outside and witnessed Manny running across the neighbour’s lawn as he fled the scene. Another witness, Gerald Koe, also provided testimony about the events of December 19th that would later be entered into the court record.
Manny was still in Sacramento, and the evidence was already beginning to close in around him.
The Discovery
The morning of December 19th, 1980, Edna Smith – Leah Schendel’s neighbour on the other side of the hall – went to check on her at Vernon McMaster’s urging.
What she found stopped her cold. The screen door to Leah’s apartment had been cut. The main door was wide open. The television was on. Sound turned all the way down.
Edna called the police.
When investigators arrived and secured the scene at Sacramento Manor, they began processing the apartment methodically. What they recovered was significant. Manny’s fingerprints and palm prints were lifted from the handle of a tea kettle and from multiple other items found scattered throughout the apartment. Personal articles belonging to Leah Schendel were later recovered directly from Manny’s belongings. Physical evidence that placed him at the scene beyond any reasonable dispute.
But it was not the forensic work that broke the case open.
It was his own brother.
The Brother’s Decision
In the days following the incident, Linda Babbitt, Bill’s wife, noticed something unusual around the house. Coins were turning up in odd places. Manny had been buying gifts for the children with money nobody could account for.
Bill started looking closer. He found a small piggy bank stuffed with rolls of nickels. Then, going through Manny’s belongings, he found a cigarette lighter. Engraved on it were the initials “L.S.”
Bill picked up the newspaper. He read about the woman who had been found at Sacramento Manor. He knew Leah Schendel had just returned from Reno, where she had been playing the nickel slots. The nickels, the lighter, the initials – it all lined up.
Bill Babbitt went to the police.
He was not trying to send his brother to his death. He was trying to get him help – the psychiatric intervention Manny had needed for over a decade. The detectives assured him directly. Their exact words, as Bill later recalled them: “You don’t have to worry about your brother going to the gas chamber. We’re going to find a hospital for him. Perhaps a place like Vacaville.”
Vacaville was a reference to the California Medical Facility, a state prison with a dedicated psychiatric unit.
That promise was never kept.
The Interviews
After his arrest, Manny was interviewed twice on record. Sacramento police detective Terry Brown conducted the first – a tape-recorded interview in which Manny denied any memory of what happened to Leah Schendel.
The second was a separate videotaped session conducted by defence psychiatrist Dr. David Excelit. In that interview, Manny walked through the events of December 18th in detail: the bar, the van, walking to 21st Street, passing out – then nothing. A complete blank where the rest of the night should have been.
Across both recorded interviews, the memory denial was identical and consistent.
The Trial
The trial of Manuel Pina Babbitt opened in Sacramento in 1982 under circumstances that were compromised before a single witness took the stand.
Bill and Linda Babbitt had scraped together what money they could to hire a private attorney. That attorney quit at the arraignment. He was too busy to continue. The court stepped in and appointed a replacement – a lawyer named James Shank.
Shank had never tried a death penalty case in his life.
What followed was one of the most consequential legal failures in California’s modern criminal history. Throughout the trial, Shank was reportedly consuming multiple drinks during lunch recesses. He never requested Manny’s Vietnam military medical records. He called no witnesses who had served alongside Manny at Khe Sanh. He made no effort to document the family’s deep history of psychiatric illness.
He later told Bill Babbitt directly that he did not trust black people to serve on a jury. He never challenged the composition of the panel.
Years after the trial, Shank admitted in court filings that he had failed completely in the death penalty phase. He later resigned from the State Bar after pleading no contest to embezzling $50,000 from clients’ trust funds.
Manny Babbitt, a black man, was tried before an all-white jury with a white judge and a white defence attorney who never once raised the issue of racial bias.
The Defence Case
The prosecution was led by Attorney General John K. Van de Kamp, with Chief Assistant Attorney General Steve White and Deputy Attorneys General Ward A. Campbell, Garrett Beaumont, and Edmund D. McMurray presenting the state’s case.
The defence built its argument on three pillars:
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That the traumatic brain injury Manny sustained in his bicycle accident at age twelve had permanently impaired his ability to function under stress.
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That his combat experience in Vietnam had produced severe PTSD, causing a dissociative state during both crimes.
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That Manny may have suffered from psychomotor epilepsy – a neurological condition in which a person carries out actions while in a clinically unconscious state.
Defence psychologist Dr. Joan Blunt testified that neurological testing revealed damage to the right temporal and left parietal-occipital regions of Manny’s brain. Her conclusion was direct: he lacked the mental capacity to form criminal intent at the time of the offenses.
Defence psychiatrist Dr. Alan David Excelit testified that during both crimes, Manny had been in a PTSD-induced dissociative state – reliving combat and clinically unaware of where he actually was or what he was actually doing.
William Babbitt, Manny’s brother, took the stand and described in detail the man who came back from Vietnam: the personality shift, the explosive outbursts, the hypervigilance that never switched off, the sleep disorder, the suicide attempt.
Teresa Babbitt, Manny’s former common-law wife, testified about specific episodes she had witnessed firsthand. She described how the sight of green garbage bags would visibly disturb him. How certain songs on the radio connected to Vietnam would cause him to get up and turn them off without a word. How there were moments when he would shout at her to grab the children and take cover from bombs that existed only in his mind.
The Prosecution’s Rebuttal
Dr. Globus offered sur-rebuttal testimony on diminished capacity. However, he had not personally examined Manny – a fact the prosecution seized on to undermine the credibility of the entire defence psychiatric case.
The prosecution’s rebuttal witness was psychiatrist Dr. Lee Coleman. His argument was pointed. He told the jury that mental health professionals are no better equipped than ordinary people to determine what was happening in a defendant’s mind at the moment a crime was committed. He was asking the jury to set aside everything the defence experts had presented.
The jury did exactly that.
The Verdict
On April 20th, 1982, Manuel Babbitt was found guilty on all counts: first-degree murder, robbery, and the assault on Mavis W.
On May 8th, the same jury determined he had been legally sane at the time of the crimes.
On July 6th, 1982, he was sentenced to death.
Two of those jurors later came forward publicly. They stated they would not have voted for a death sentence had they been given the full picture of Manny’s military service and his diagnosed mental illness. That information was never put in front of them.
James Shank never gave it to them.
Nineteen Years on Death Row
Manny Babbitt arrived at San Quentin State Prison in 1982, carrying a death sentence and nineteen years of waiting ahead of him.
The legal battles began almost immediately. In 1988, the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld both the conviction and the death sentence. The following year, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Through the 1990s, three further habeas petitions were filed by his legal team. Every one of them was denied. His appeal team was led by public defender Jessica Maguire and private attorney Charles Patterson – a man who had himself served as a Marine at Khe Sanh and understood firsthand what that siege produced in the men who survived it.
But while the courts were closing every door, something unexpected was happening inside San Quentin.
Manny was changing.
He studied tai chi. He trained as a chef in the prison kitchen. He read philosophy and eastern religious texts. He drew. He wrote. He taught fellow inmates and counselled other prisoners. By the time his execution date approached, he was a grandfather.
The man the system had failed at every turn had, inside a death row cell, built something resembling a life.
The Purple Heart
Then came March 1998.
The United States Marine Corps sent two officers to San Quentin. The ceremony was held in the warden’s office. Manny was shackled when they pinned the Purple Heart on his chest – the medal he had earned at Khe Sanh thirty years earlier.
He stood proud and tall.
One year before his scheduled execution, the country finally honoured him.
The reaction was immediate and divided. Leah Schendel’s granddaughter, Laura Thompson, spoke publicly on behalf of the family. They were outraged. They pushed for and successfully obtained legislation banning any future Purple Heart presentations inside California state prisons.
Across the country, a different response was building. Veterans’ organisations, mental health associations, Nobel Prize recipients, clergy, and prominent public figures signed petitions calling for clemency. More than seven hundred protesters gathered outside San Quentin.
Among those advocating publicly alongside Bill Babbitt was David Kaczynski – a man who had faced his own agonising decision when he turned in his brother, Ted, known as the Unabomber. Two men who had both reported a brother to authorities. Two men living with what that decision cost.
The Clemency Hearing
On April 26th, 1999, the clemency hearing took place.
Laura Thompson and members of Leah Schendel’s family sat in that room and directly confronted Manny’s supporters. They demanded finality. They had waited nearly two decades, and they wanted the process to end.
Governor Gray Davis reviewed the case. Davis was himself a Vietnam veteran. He understood what that war had done to the men who served in it.
He denied clemency anyway. His stated reason was unambiguous: “A Purple Heart does not excuse murder.”
There would be no further appeals. The execution date held.
The Final Hours
May 3rd, 1999. Manuel Pina Babbitt turned fifty years old inside San Quentin State Prison.
He spent his final hours with his family, his attorneys, a former high school teacher, and a fellow Vietnam veteran. He did not seek spiritual counsel as most condemned men do. He read poetry. He meditated. He was calm in a way that unsettled the people around him.
He was offered his last meal – the standard fifty-dollar allowance given to every condemned inmate in California. He refused it. He asked instead that the fifty dollars be donated to a shelter for homeless Vietnam veterans.
Before the night was over, he made a promise to his brother, Bill: when it was done, Bill would campaign against the death penalty and carry Manny’s name into that fight.
The Execution
At 12:29 a.m. on May 4th, the lethal injection began inside San Quentin’s execution chamber.
At 12:37 a.m., Manuel Pina Babbitt was pronounced dead – one day after his fiftieth birthday.
As he lay there, Manny attempted to raise his hand in a salute. He was shackled too tightly to complete it.
Bill Babbitt wept. The Marines present wept. The lawyers wept. The warden wept. The guards wept.
His last words to the room were five: “I forgive all of you.”
He was the first African-American executed in California since the state resumed executions in 1992.
The Burial
On May 10th, his body was returned to Wareham, Massachusetts, where he was buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery with full military honours.
Two of the jurors who sentenced him later expressed public regret, stating they would not have voted for death had they known the full truth.
Bill Babbitt honoured his promise. He has spent every year since travelling the world advocating against capital punishment.
The contents of Manny’s San Quentin cell were preserved and archived at Albany University. In 2016, an animated documentary titled Last Day of Freedom, built entirely on Bill’s firsthand account, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
The Question That Remains
Today, approximately three hundred veterans remain on death row across the United States.
Leah Schendel’s granddaughter, Laura Thompson, and her family have maintained consistently that justice was served. Both positions exist. Neither cancels the other out.
What this case leaves behind is a question no verdict has ever fully resolved: What does a country owe the people it sends to war – and then leaves behind when they return?
The United States Marine Corps pinned a Purple Heart on a man it had trained to kill, sent to combat, and left to unravel. The State of California executed him. His own brother – who loved him enough to turn him in, hoping for help – spent the rest of his life trying to undo what the system did with that information.
Manny Babbitt survived seventy-seven days at Khe Sanh. He survived rocket shrapnel to the head and hand. He survived being found unconscious on top of a pile of dead soldiers.
He did not survive what came after.
The medal came one year before the needle. The country honoured the soldier, then killed the man. And somewhere in the space between those two acts lies the answer to the question that neither the courts nor the governor nor the executioner could resolve.
What does America owe the soldiers it breaks?
Manny Babbitt’s last words were not anger. They were not defiance. They were not a demand for justice or an appeal for mercy.
“I forgive all of you.”
The question is whether we deserve that forgiveness. And whether we will do anything to earn it from the next soldier who comes home and cannot find his way back.
