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Massie v. State5/26/1998
fter school the boys were unable to gain entry to their home. They asked Moser if he knew where their mother was. Moser went to the back door of the Jefferson Boulevard residence and noticed broken glass by the knob. Moser knocked on the door and yelled inside for Mrs. Massie, but received no reply. He then took the Massie children to their grandparents' house that was nearby. From there he telephoned Mrs. Massie, but received no answer. After attempting unsuccessfully to contact Massie, Moser returned to the Jefferson Boulevard residence, reached through the broken pane, and opened the door. Moser discovered Mrs. Massie's body and immediately telephoned 911.
Community Rescue Service received that emergency call at 3:21 p.m. and promptly dispatched two paramedics who arrived at the murder scene approximately two minutes later. Randolph Scott Spies (Spies), one of the paramedics, testified on cross-examination that Mrs. Massie had been dead for "well over an hour" before he arrived. On redirect, Spies said that he could not specify by how much more than an hour the body had been dead. It was cool, but not cold. Spies's concern was whether to initiate resuscitation, which he did not attempt.
The witness with whose testimony we are concerned is Jeffrey Craig Kercheval (Kercheval), a forensic chemist with the Hagerstown Police Department. He arrived at the crime scene at approximately 4:05 p.m., conducted a brief walk-through of the premises, and at about 4:15 p.m. made an examination of the victim which is more particularly described, infra. The trial court permitted Kercheval to express, over objection, the opinion that Mrs. Massie had been dead for as long as five hours, i.e., from 11:15 a.m. at the earliest. Massie claims that that ruling was erroneous.
Dr. Edward Ditto, III (Ditto), the Deputy Medical Examiner for Washington County, arrived at the scene shortly after 5:00 p.m. Ditto concluded that Mrs. Massie died at approximately 2:30 p.m. He recorded that as the time of death in his official report. Later, Ditto told the defense investigator that the time of death was 2:30 p.m., "give or take fifteen minutes." At trial Ditto testified that he was told by an unidentified officer at the crime scene that Massie had visited his wife there at about 2:00 p.m. Ditto took that information into account in his reported time of death. Having since learned that that information was not correct, Ditto testified that death could have been as early as 12:15 p.m., although he acknowledged that his examination of the body was also consistent with death having occurred at 2:15 p.m.
Dr. Dennis Chute, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Mrs. Massie in Baltimore, recorded in his report that the time of death was 2:30 p.m. He was not asked any questions about the time of death.
The State's theory of the case was that Massie murdered his wife and attempted to make it appear that the murder was committed by an intruder. Further, there was evidence from which the jury could have found that Massie's motive was to avoid transferring an anticipated one-half of the value of his business and of the Jefferson Boulevard property to his wife in their divorce which Massie was anxious to conclude in order to marry another woman.
The evidence linking Massie to the murder included the following. Kercheval found a note on the television set at the crime scene which read: "Your husband is next, I need money." That note was written in ink that matched the ink in a pen taken from Massie. The pen was a counterfeit Cross pen that had a very rare type of ink, thus substantially increasing the likelihood that Massie's pen was the one used to write the note. Further,
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