Ohio Court Affirms Convictions and Death Sentence, Rejecting Argument That Additional Neuroimaging Could Have Provided Insight Into Defendant’s 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
On December 10, 2020, the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and death sentence of Shawn Grate for the murder of two women in 2016. Grate had claimed that “defense counsel were ineffective for failing to request a continuance to conduct additional neuroimaging.”
In 2016, when Grate was 40 years old, he abducted, raped, and murdered two women in Ashland County, Ohio. He was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder and sentenced to death. Grate appealed his convictions and sentence, raising 12 different propositions. In one claim, Grate asserted that neuroimaging evidence not presented at his trial could have provided additional mitigating evidence.
Before his trial, Grate underwent neurological testing, including an MRI scan. Because the neurologist who performed the MRI was not trained to perform fMRI (functional MRI) or DTI (diffusion tensor imaging) scans, no further scans were conducted at the time. The defense counsel requested approval for those additional scans, citing a statement from Grate’s psychologist that “it might provide evidence of a neurocognitive disorder” and “might give him more insight into Grate’s psychological condition,” though “it would not necessarily change his diagnoses.” But the court denied the request to conduct the additional tests, finding that the defense counsel had not established that the testing was scientifically reliable because the defense counsel had not provided evidence supporting the tests’ reliability.
At trial, Grate’s psychologist testified that he believed Grate’s “brain [was] not working right” and that Grate suffered from “complex trauma and personality disorders,” and that there may be evidence of a mild neurocognitive disorder “due to early childhood concussions.” No MRI evidence was presented during mitigation.
The Ohio Supreme Court rejected all 12 of Grate’s propositions. As to Grate’s assertion that additional neuroimaging would have provided insight into his mental health, the court found that “it is improbable that a continuance, additional neuroimaging, or a better presentation of the mitigating evidence would have changed his sentence.” The court affirmed Grate’s convictions and sentence of death.
One judge concurred and authored a separate opinion voicing his concerns about Grate’s defense counsel, saying, “the ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims that I find to be particularly significant are related to counsel’s failure to present adequate psychiatric and neurological evidence in the mitigation phase of Grate’s capital proceedings.” The concurring judge asserted that the defense counsel had “[left] the jury with an incomplete view of Grate’s mental health[,]” which could have had a significant impact on mitigation.
Key Words: Ohio, death penalty, neuroimaging, MRI, ineffective assistance of counsel, mental health
Citation: State v. Grate, 2020 WL 7250546
This post is the 56th 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.
