Clang possibly skipping line(s) of code while compiling

Question

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

#define MAX_BITS 32

int counter = 0, dec_eqv = 0;
int runcounter = 1;

int binToDec(char *bit)
{
    printf("dec_eqv is %d\n", dec_eqv);
    if (counter == 0 && runcounter)
    {
        dec_eqv = 0;
        int i = 0;
        while (*(bit + i++))
            ;
        counter = (i - 1) - 1;
        runcounter = 0;
        printf("counter is %d\n", counter);
    }
    if (*bit != 0)
    {
        printf("*bit not zero\n");
        if (*bit == '1')
        {
            dec_eqv += (int)pow(2, counter--);
        }
        else
        {
            counter--;
        }
        binToDec(bit + 1);
    }
    else
    {
        printf("here *bit is 0\n");
        runcounter = 1;
        printf ("here dec_eqv is %d\n", dec_eqv);
        return dec_eqv;
        printf ("Skipping return\n");
    }
    return -1;
}

int main()
{
    char bin[MAX_BITS];
    printf("Enter binary number (%d-bit max): ", MAX_BITS);
    scanf("%[^\n]s", bin);
    int result = binToDec(bin);
    printf("Decimal equivalent of 0b%s is %d.", bin, result);
    return 0;
}

I've added the printf() statements in binToDec() for debugging, and it seems that the compiler is ignoring the return dec_eqv; statement in the final else block and directly executing the return -1; at the end. What could be possibly wrong? I am using Clang/LLVM compiler in Ubuntu 23.10 AMD64 and no errors or warnings were generated during compilation.