 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Massie v. State5/26/1998
a cigarette butt, found in the trash can in the kitchen at 311 Jefferson, carried DNA that matched Massie's DNA. Glass on a hammer recovered by Kercheval and glass fragments from blue work pants belonging to Massie were "optically indistinguishable" from the glass in the kitchen door's broken window pane. This type of glass was different from ninety-one percent of the glass in the FBI's data base.
In addition, the murderer had taken Mrs. Massie's pocketbook. Thereafter Massie asked Moser whether he had noticed that the purse was missing, but a detective testified that this information was not made known to Massie or to the public. There was also evidence that Mrs. Massie carried in her purse an address book that contained the unlisted telephone number of a longtime friend of Mrs. Massie. That friend testified that, after the murder, Massie telephoned her on her unlisted line.
Massie did not testify at trial. The defense strategy was to generate a reasonable doubt based on the fact that Massie was at the police station when, according to Dr. Ditto's report, Mrs. Massie was being strangled.
Against the foregoing background we now turn to the issue before us. The question presented in Massie's petition for certiorari reads:
"Did the trial court err in concluding that, although a witness was not an expert in pathology and could not give an opinion as to time of death, the witness could give 'his opinion the time of death was somewhere between the time of his arrival and two hours before ... six hours before'?"
The phraseology of the question presented reflects the evolution of the trial judge's analysis that led to the disputed admission of Kercheval's opinion.
The Court of Special Appeals described the witness's general qualifications as follows:
"Kercheval received an Associates of Arts degree from Hagerstown Junior College and a Bachelors of Science degree with a major in Biology from St. Mary's College in Maryland. He earned a Masters degree in forensic science from George Washington University and did post-graduate studies in toxicology from American University. He has been the forensic chemist for the Hagerstown Police Department for approximately 11 years. He also teaches at Hagerstown Junior College instructing the Criminalistics curriculum. He instructs at the Western Maryland Police Academy, which is a police training academy of the Hagerstown Police Department. He has also instructed a forensic science seminar for the Mid-Atlantic Association of Forensic Scientists, a professional forensic scientist organization. He has completed the following training: the Maryland Law Enforcement Officers Occult New Age Beliefs School (on the investigation of the occult at crime scenes); the F.B.I. Crime Scene Protection and Evidence Preservation School; the Eastman Kodak Crime Scene Photography School; the F.B.I. Basic Footwear and Tire Print Evidence Class; the F.B.I. Basic Fingerprint Classification School; the Mid-Atlantic Association of Forensic Scientists Expert Forensic Testimony Workshop; the FBI's Advance Latent Fingerprint School; the United States Secret Service Questioned Documents Course; and the Mid-Atlantic Association of Forensic Scientists Advanced Training Techniques for Footwear and Tire Tread Impression Evidence. In 1993 he was bestowed the American Academy of Forensic Science award for outstanding service to the forensic sciences in the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United States. He also was the first recipient of the Remarkable Young Forensic Scientist Award by Scientific Sleuthing, an international forensic science magazine. He belongs to many boards and associations and work on some noted cases, but they are too
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Maryland Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|