Maryland’s highest court limits use of ballistics evidence at trials

By BRIAN WITTE
Associated Press

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s Supreme Court has ruled that a firearms expert who testified at a murder trial shouldn’t have been allowed to offer an unqualified opinion that bullets recovered from a crime scene came from the suspect’s gun. The court ruled 4-3 this week in an appeal by Kobina Ebo Abruquah, who was convicted of murder in 2013 after the court allowed a firearms examiner to testify without qualification that bullets at a murder scene were fired from a gun that Abruquah had acknowledged was his. The ruling remands Abruquah’s case back to Prince George’s County Circuit Court for a new trial. The ruling will limit the use of such testimony in other Maryland cases.