On November 30, the United States Supreme Court over­turned the death sen­tence of George Porter, a Korean War vet­er­an from Florida who had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1988. 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. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit had held that such evi­dence would not have made a dif­fer­ence at sen­tenc­ing. 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.”

Porter rep­re­sent­ed him­self dur­ing his pre-tri­al pro­ceed­ings and for much of the guilt-phase of the tri­al. He then plead­ed guilty, but asked for coun­sel dur­ing the penal­ty phase of the case. His inex­pe­ri­enced lawyer put on only one wit­ness in mit­i­ga­tion – Porter’s ex-wife. In addi­tion to the evi­dence that was not pre­sent­ed about the trau­ma from his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the war, there was sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of vio­lent abuse in Porter’s child­hood. The Court not­ed: ​“It is unrea­son­able to dis­count to irrel­e­vance the evi­dence of Porter’s abu­sive child­hood, espe­cial­ly when that kind of his­to­ry may have par­tic­u­lar salience for a jury eval­u­at­ing Porter’s behav­ior in his rela­tion­ship with [his girl­friend] Williams. It is also unrea­son­able to con­clude that Porter’s mil­i­tary ser­vice would be reduced to ​‘incon­se­quen­tial pro­por­tions,’ sim­ply because the jury would also have learned that Porter went AWOL on more than one occa­sion. Our Nation has a long tra­di­tion of accord­ing lenien­cy to vet­er­ans in recog­ni­tion of their ser­vice, espe­cial­ly for those who fought on the front lines as Porter did.” (cita­tions omitted).

(Porter v. McCollum, No. 08 – 10537 (U.S. Nov. 30, 2009) (per curi­am)). See also U.S. Supreme Court and Representation.

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