POST: "Limits Imposed on Ballistics Evidence by MD Supreme Court," by Sacejewia White, published by 'Forensic Resources' (North Carolina) Office of Indigent forensic Services) on July 21, 2023.
GIST: The Maryland Supreme Court granted a new trial after deciding that a firearms examiner should not have been permitted to offer an unqualified opinion that the crime scene bullets were fired from the defendant’s gun.
Specifically, the reports, studies, and testimony relied on by the examiner did not demonstrate that the firearms identification methodology employed in the case could reliably support an unqualified conclusion that the bullets were fired from a particular firearm.
Moreover, admission of the examiner’s testimony was not harmless error because, absent that evidence, the guilty verdict rested upon circumstantial evidence of a dispute between defendant and the victim, a witness who heard gunfire around the time of the dispute, a firearm recovered from the residence, and testimony of a jailhouse informant.
Ballistics evidence can still be used to narrow down what category, brand, or model of gun may have been used in a crime, but it can’t be used anymore to link a shooting to one specific gun, according to the opinion.
An important issue regarding the reliability is reproducibility. A study called Ames 2, found that when they tried to reproduce the opinions of one examiner versus another examiner, they found that over 50% of the time, the second examiner came to a different conclusion on the same evidence than the first examiner.
Read the entire full opinion here.
https://forensicresources.org/2023/limits-imposed-on-ballistics-evidence-by-md-supreme-court/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
------------------------------------------------------------------
YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
