OCTOBER 16, 2008

Staff Report
Leesburg, FL Daily Commercial

LEESBURG – The family of wrongfully imprisoned World War II veteran Samuel Snow of Leesburg could get benefits after President Bush signed a new law.

Bush signed legislation Wednesday awarding Snow back pay plus interest for benefits he’d wrongly been denied by the Army.

Because Snow died in July, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., wants the Army to give the benefit to the veteran’s wife and son. Awarding interest on Snow’s back pay could amount to as much as $80,000 for his family.

“While it was never about the money in his eyes, I’m sure he’d find peace in knowing the military took care of his wife and son by quickly awarding them the interest owed on his back pay,” Nelson wrote Wednesday in a letter to Army Secretary Pete Geren. “Now the Army needs to abide by the words of Abraham Lincoln: ‘To care for him who shall have borne the battle -- and for his widow, and his orphan.’ “

Snow’s case first came to light in October of 2007, when the Army admitted it had made a mistake in wrongfully convicting him 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.

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 others in similar circumstances who have convictions overturned by the courts or Army’s Board for Correction of Military Records.

In July, the Army awarded Snow an honorable discharge and a public apology for wrongfully convicting him. The very day after the discharge ceremony in Seattle, Snow died. Snow, 84, was survived by his wife, Margaret, and his son, Ray.