December 1, 2009
Private: High Court Roundup
Defense Department v. ACLU, Military detainees, Porter v. McCollum, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court added to its docket and issued decisions involving a death-row inmate's ineffective counsel claim and photos of military treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Porter v. McCollum, the high court reversed a federal appeals court decision that turned away George Porter Jr.'s ineffective counsel claim. In a per curiam opinion, the high court concluded that Porter, convicted in 1987 of murder, had been ill-served by his court-appointed attorney. As Tony Mauro reported for The BLT, the justices noted that Porter's attorney failed to introduce evidence of Porter's service in the Korean War and his post-traumatic suffering.
The justices wrote:
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. Moreover, the relevance of Porter's extensive combat experience is not only that he served honorably under extreme hardship and gruesome conditions, but also that the jury might find mitigating the intense stress and mental and emotional toll that combat took on Porter.
The high court's decision sends the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for a new sentencing hearing.
As ACSblog noted yesterday, in Defense Department v. American Civil Liberties Union, the high court vacated a lower court ruling that would have forced the government to release photographs showing the treatment of military detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. SCOTUSblog reports that the decision sends the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to reconsider its decision in "the wake of a new law Congress passed to keep those photos from public disclosure." The Obama administration argued against release of the photos, saying they would incite anti-American sentiment abroad and further endanger troops. The New York Times reports that a government brief in the case described some of the photos as showing soldiers holding guns to the heads of hooded and chained detainees. Steven R. Shapiro, the ACLU's legal director, said in a statement, "We continue to believe that the photos should be released, and we intend to press that case in the lower court. No democracy has ever been made stronger by suppressing evidence of its own misconduct."
The Court added three cases to its docket. The cases involve securities laws and whether they should apply to international dealings, a federal prison sentencing law and a double jeopardy case.