Tavon Fullwood v. Maryland

In Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510 (2003), this Court held that the Court of Appeals of Maryland unreasonably denied post-conviction relief where trial counsel failed to investigate a viable mitigation case. Even after Wiggins and Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374 (2005), Maryland courts have adhered to an unduly narrow view of attorneys’ duty to conduct reasonable investigations. Maryland v. Borchardt, 914 A.2d 1126, 1157 (Md. 2007) (Bell, C.J., dissenting). Here, the Maryland courts rejected an ineffective assistance claim based on trial counsel’s failure to investigate an expert challenge to the State’s forensic evidence—even though the evidence was key to the State’s theory of attempted murder, the evidence was subject to easy challenge, and trial counsel testified he had no strategic reason not to pursue this defense. The opinions below did not cite Wiggins, Rompilla, or out-of-state decisions granting relief under similar circumstances. Maryland thus remains a persistent outlier on counsel’s duty to investigate. Is it ineffective assistance for defense counsel to fail to investigate a viable expert challenge to forensic evidence that is central to the prosecution’s theory of the case?