USA - Georgia. The Georgia Supreme Court reversed the death sentence of David Aaron Perkins

The Georgia Supreme Court on Friday reversed the death sentence of David Aaron Perkins. The court said Perkins' trial counsel should have thoroughly investigated his troubled background so it could have been presented to the jury in the sentencing phase of his trial. Perkins was convicted of killing 38-year-old Herbert Ryals III in August 1994 to get his wallet. The Court sent the case back for a new sentencing trial, noting Perkins' new lawyers had unearthed an abundance of mitigation evidence that was not presented during the 1997 trial. The ruling detailed numerous accounts from relatives who said Perkins' father regularly beat him until the time he was a young teenager. At a picnic when Perkins was 4, his father beat him until he collapsed, witnesses said. Even more powerful than the evidence of the abuse Perkins suffered as a youth was evidence showing how his behavior changed dramatically after he suffered 2 significant head injuries, Nahmias wrote. When Perkins was 18, he was in a car wreck that left him in a coma for 5 days. When he was 20, he was attacked by two men, one of whom punctured Perkins' skull with the steel prongs of a rake. They had to be surgically removed, and medical records show two of the prongs penetrated Perkins' brain. If such evidence were presented at trial, the ruling said, there is a reasonable probability the jury would not have sentenced Perkins to death.