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Cake day: October 18th, 2024

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  • There are often important circumstances DuhSantis seems to be ignoring.

    While death penalty opponents and tough-on-crime hard-liners clash over the moral arguments and political motivations of DeSantis’ historic urgency, another debate is suddenly raging: Should an inmate’s military service matter when a judge, jury, or governor decides who deserves the ultimate punishment for society’s most heinous crimes?

    The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on that question 16 years ago in a case out of—none other than—Florida. The justices overturned the death sentence of Gregory Porter, a decorated Korean War veteran convicted of killing his former girlfriend and her boyfriend, because his attorney had presented no evidence about the combat that left him “a traumatized, changed man.”

    About one-fifth of those veterans served in a major conflict, with the largest group—106 veterans—from the Vietnam War. About 40% of those Vietnam veterans had a known diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and many had been exposed to Agent Orange, the report found.