Army veteran, hit man in killing of Navy officer, awaits new sentencing hearing on death row
Army veteran David A. Runyon, convicted of being the hit man in a 2007 murder-for-hire slaying of a young Navy officer in Newport News. A jury in U.S. District Court in Norfolk sentenced Runyon to death in 2009. But in December 2020, a panel for the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that the case be sent back to Norfolk for a hearing on whether one of Runyon’s trial attorneys was “ineffective” when he failed to fully explore Runyon’s brain damage at trial.