USA - Florida. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of George Porter

The United States Supreme Court unanimously overturned the death sentence of George Porter, 76, white, a Korean War veteran. The Court stated that Porter's trial lawyer failed to investigate and present ample mitigating evidence, including the fact that Porter's battle service in the war left him severely traumatized. More than 30 years after his combat experience in Korea, he was charged with the Oct. 1986 shooting and killing of his ex-girlfriend Evelyn Williams and her new boyfriend Walter Burrows. There was little doubt of his guilt. Porter first decided to represent to himself, then asked to plead guilty halfway through the trial. But his jury was never told, and his appointed lawyer did not know, of his valiant military service more than 3 decades earlier. In the past, the high court has set aside just a few death sentences because a defense lawyer failed to tell jurors of crucial "mitigating evidence" that would likely have persuaded them to spare his life. Monday's decision appears to be the first in which the court cited "post-traumatic stress disorder" from military combat as the kind of crucial evidence that calls for leniency. It comes as thousands of U.S. soldiers are being treated for the disorder from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both the Florida Supreme Court and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld Porter's death sentence, despite his overlooked military record, but the Supreme Court accepted Porter's petition and without dissent issued its opinion the same day, stating, "Petitioner George Porter is a veteran who was both wounded and decorated for his active participation in two major engagements during the Korean War; his combat service unfortunately left him a traumatized, changed man. His commanding officer’s moving description of those two battles was only a fraction of the mitigating evidence that his counsel failed to discover or present during the penalty phase of his trial in 1988."