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

A firearms expert who testified at a Maryland 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 state’s highest court concluded in a ruling that will limit the use such testimony in the state’s courts. The Supreme Court of Maryland ruled in a 4-3 decision 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 crime scene were fired from a gun that Abruquah had acknowledged was his.