News Brief — Texas Appeals Court Upholds Conviction and Death Sentence of Veteran With PTSD

NEWS (2/5/20): The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction and death sentence of Marine Corps veteran John Thuesen, who sustained combat-related PTSD from his service in the war in Iraq. In an unsigned, unpublished opinion on February 5, the appeals court adopted all but a handful of the trial court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law, which had rejected Thuesen’s claim that his trial lawyer had been ineffective in failing to investigate and present available evidence of the psychological impact of his posttraumatic stress disorder.