Iraq Vet’s One-Day Child Porn Sentence Based on PTSD Tossed

An Iraq War veteran sentenced to one-day imprisonment for possession of child pornography will be resentenced after the Sixth Circuit found the court improperly focused almost entirely on the defendant’s post-traumatic stress disorder.

The trial court gave little attention to the harm to victims of child pornography, the need for general deterrence through sentencing, or the large quantity of images and videos the defendant possessed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said Friday.

In sentencing Andrew Demma, the trial court relied most heavily on a psychologist’s testimony that his experience in Iraq was “the direct cause of ...