Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 172.0

Cite as: 558 U. S. 4 (2009) 

11 

Per Curiam 

experts agreed that Van Hook did not suffer from a “mental 
disease  or  defect,”  the  trial  court  learned  that  Van  Hook’s 
borderline personality disorder and his consumption of drugs 
and  alcohol  the  day  of  the  crime  impaired  “his  ability  to  re­
frain from the [crime],” id., at 303a, and that his “explo[sion]” 
of  “senseless and  bizarre brutality”  may have  resulted from 
what  one  expert  termed  a  “homosexual  panic,”  id.,  at  376a. 
Despite  all  the  mitigating  evidence  the  defense  did  pre­
sent,  Van  Hook  and  the  Court  of  Appeals  fault  his  counsel 
for failing to ﬁnd more.  What  his  counsel  did  discover,  the 
argument  goes,  gave  them  “reason  to  suspect  that  much 
worse  details  existed,”  and  that  suspicion  should  have 
prompted  them  to  interview  other  family  members—his 
stepsister,  two  uncles,  and  two  aunts—as  well  as  a  psychia­
trist  who  once  treated  his  mother,  all  of  whom  “could  have 
helped his counsel narrate the true story of Van Hook’s child­
hood  experiences.”  560  F.  3d,  at  528.  But  there  comes  a 
point at which evidence from more distant relatives can rea­
sonably  be  expected  to  be  only  cumulative,  and  the  search 
for  it  distractive  from  more  important  duties.  The  ABA 
Standards prevailing at the time called for Van Hook’s coun­
sel to cover several broad  categories of mitigating evidence, 
see  1  ABA  Standards  4–4.1,  comment.,  at  4–55,  which  they 
did.  And given all the evidence they unearthed from those 
closest  to  Van  Hook’s  upbringing  and  the  experts  who  re­
viewed  his  history,  it  was  not  unreasonable  for  his  counsel 
not to identify and interview every other living family mem­
ber  or  every  therapist  who  once  treated  his  parents.  This 
is not a case in which the defendant’s attorneys failed to act 
while  potentially  powerful  mitigating  evidence  stared  them 
in the face, cf. Wiggins, 539 U. S., at 525, or would have been 
apparent  from  documents  any  reasonable  attorney  would 
have obtained, cf. Rompilla v.  Beard, 545 U. S. 374, 389–393 
(2005).  It  is  instead  a  case,  like  Strickland  itself,  in  which 
defense counsel’s “decision not to seek more” mitigating evi­
dence from the defendant’s background “than was already in