Fourth Circuit Finds Death Row Inmate’s Trial Counsel Ineffective for Failing to Present Evidence of Brain Injury or Mental Health
Recent Cases in Law and Neuroscience, Curated by the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior and the Shen Neurolaw Lab with support from the Dana Foundation
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated the dismissal of David Anthony Runyon’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel on December 23, 2020 and remanded the issue for an evidentiary hearing. Runyon’s counsel had not presented the mitigating evidence of his brain injury and mental health at trial.
In 2007, Runyon shot and killed Cory Allen Voss. He was hired by Voss’s wife and the man she was having an affair with. Runyon was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for hire, carjacking resulting in death, and murder with the use of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. The district court sentenced him to death. On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the sentence.
However, Runyon filed a motion to vacate or correct his sentence, asserting 18 grounds for relief, four of which were granted as appealable. One of these arguments was “whether trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to investigate and present mitigating evidence of Runyon’s brain injury and potential mental illness.”
Before Runyon’s trial, two government mental health experts reported that Runyon had sustained several head traumas during military training and had two serious car accidents, yet concluded that he did not “suffer from any serious mental illness, mental disorder, or brain pathology and that there [were] no mental health factors that are mitigating or aggravating to whatever sentence, if any, is determined by the court.”
Runyon’s counsel obtained the opinion of their own experts. A neuropsychologist opined that Runyon’s low scores on tests were “entirely consistent with brainstem injury” and “merit[ed] further neurological investigation.” In a separate writing directly to Runyon’s counsel, the neuropsychologist wrote that “It would be essential for Mr. Runyon to be evaluated by a neurologist, and have the necessary tests to establish the nature of this disorder.”
A second expert, a neuropsychiatrist, found that Runyon “clearly has impaired executive functioning suggestive of frontal lobe brain impairment” and potentially suffered from PTSD. This neuropsychiatrist requested to view Runyon’s brain scans once complete, which Runyon’s counsel did not provide. Neither expert testified at sentencing, and none of their information was used as mitigating evidence.
In 2015, after Runyon’s trial, the neuropsychiatrist conducted a review of Runyon’s brain scans and found that they revealed “multiple white matter hyperintensities” consistent with Runyon’s head injuries, which he opined “resulted in impaired executive functioning and decision making.” The neuropsychiatrist said that had he testified at trial, he “would have testified that in [his] expert opinion [Runyon] was a brain damaged individual with migrainous headaches and a disorder of executive functioning with symptoms suggestive of a psychotic thought process.”
The neuropsychologist agreed and found that the test results indicated “the presence of significant damage to the right side of the brain, as well as a psychotic disorder.”
A psychologist also evaluated Runyon’s records and agreed, stating that scientific literature shows that “frontal lobe dysfunction may result in disruption of the evaluation of personal behavior, reduced problem solving and flexibility, and marked difficulty in reprogramming an ongoing chain of behavior.” Finally, a fourth expert, a psychiatrist, concluded that Runyon’s “cognitive deficits … impaired [his] decision-making capacity beyond the impairments resulting from the distorted perceptions of reality, the impairments in judgment, and the impulsivity associated with his other psychiatric disorders.”
The district court had concluded that Runyon’s trial counsel “thoroughly investigated [Runyon’s] mental health and found that there was not enough to present a viable mitigation argument.” The appeals court disagreed, finding that “the record does not sufficiently support the government’s argument that [Runyon’s trial counsel] made a strategic choice not to pursue the potentially mitigating evidence after a reasonable investigation. Given that the relevant evidence is murky, we conclude that an evidentiary hearing should be conducted to resolve the issue.”
Accordingly, the appeals court vacated the district court’s dismissal of Runyon’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and remanded for an evidentiary hearing. The appeals court affirmed all other rulings.
One judge concurred in all of the judgement except for the decision to vacate the dismissal of the ineffective assistance of counsel claim, stating that Runyon’s counsel “made an eminently reasonable decision not to prioritize mental health evidence at the sentencing hearing.” That concurrence point to evidence that a radiologist found Runyon’s MRI and PET scans to be “normal” and asserted that bringing up Runyon’s mental health could have undermined the argument that Runyon would not present a violent threat in prison and could have opened the door for the government’s conflicting experts regarding Runyon’s mental health.
Keywords: death penalty, MRI, PET, frontal lobe, PTSD, executive functioning, mental health, brain injury, expert testimony
Citation: United States v. Runyon, №17–5, 2020 WL 9211172, at *1 (4th Cir. Dec. 23, 2020)
This post is the 64th post as part of an ongoing Center for Law, Brain & Behavior (CLBB) series tracking the latest developments in law and neuroscience cases. To see previous posts about recent cases, see the full case archive on the CLBB website. To see updates on legal scholarship, see the Neurolaw News, hosted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. This project is made possible through support of the Dana Foundation.
