The Florida Supreme Court reduced the death sentence for Ryan Green to life without parole because he suffered from schizophrenia and was not able to fully appreciate the consequences of his actions. Green was sentenced to death in 2006 for the murder of a retired Pensacola police sergeant. The jury that considered his case voted 10-2 for death. The presiding judge, who makes the sentencing decision in Florida, imposed a death sentence despite his conclusion that in the time leading up to the crime Green was in a “psychological, emotional and anti-social free fall into an abyss” and “fully immersed in a drowning pool of mental illness.” The Supreme Court overturned the sentence finding substantial and uncontroverted evidence of the defendant’s mental illness.

At his trial, Green testified that before he shot the officer he shot a bull, and that the animal had stood up and said, “I love you.” Green then approached the officer, who was out for a walk near his home and asked for directions. The letter “A” on the officer’s University of Alabama ball cap was, to Green, the sign of the Antichrist, he testified. “Green testified that God motivated him to kill Hallman,” the court wrote. “He felt God put him there, on that day, to kill Hallman because Hallman was the Antichrist.”
(Pensacola News Journal, Jan. 31, 2008). See Mental Illness.