Whether the Sixth Amendment guarantee of effective assistance of counsel is violated when counsel fails to expose junk science that sends his client to prison for the rest of his life

QUESTION PRESENTED Petitioner Mark Unger’s murder conviction rests on expert testimony that the decedent, his wife, survived for at least 90 minutes following trauma to her head. There was no scientific foundation for this testimony—it was classic junk science. Had trial counsel performed a basic investigation—such as reading the articles that supposedly supported the testimony—counsel could have excluded the testimony altogether. The question presented is: Whether the Sixth Amendment guarantee of effective assistance of counsel is violated when counsel fails to expose junk science that sends his client to prison for the rest of his life.