Justia Maryland Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

In 1980, Appellant was convicted of first degree sex offense, kidnapping of a child under sixteen years of age, and assault and battery. In 2011, Appellant filed a pro se motion for new trial, later referred to as a petition for DNA testing, requesting that the State produce certain scientific identification evidence that might contain biological material and that was related to the judgment of conviction. A circuit court judge found that the State had performed a reasonable search for the requested evidence and that the evidence no longer existed. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the judge’s findings that the State had performed a reasonable search for the requested evidence and that the evidence was no longer in the possession of the State were not clearly erroneous. View "Johnson v. State" on Justia Law

Defendant was criminally charged with failing to perform home improvement contracts and acting as a contractor without a license. Three separate home improvement contracts with different residents formed the basis of the charges. The charges were resolved through a plea agreement. As a condition of his probation, Defendant was ordered to pay restitution to each of the three victims. Defendant failed to make the restitution payments, and the district court determined that Defendant violated his probation in each of the three cases. In the meantime, Defendant was charged with obtaining property or services by issuing a bad check. Defendant pleaded guilty to the bad check charge and to the three probation violation charges. In sentencing Defendant, the circuit court conditioned probation in the bad check case on the payment of restitution to the victims in the home improvement cases. The court of special appeals struck the restitution requirement of Defendant’s probation, concluding that the circuit court was without authority to condition probation in such a manner, but otherwise upheld the sentence. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the circuit court had authority to condition Defendant’s probation on the bad check conviction on his payment of restitution to the victims of his home improvement fraud. View "State v. Stachowski" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of first-degree rape and first-degree sexual offense. The court of appeals affirmed. Defendant filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, which the Court of Appeals granted, contending, among other things, that the trial judge lacked the authority to deny his motion to postpone because only a county administrative judge or that judge’s designee may deny a motion to postpone. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding (1) a circuit court judge may deny a motion to postpone in a criminal case; (2) the trial judge did not abuse his discretion in denying the motion to postpone to obtain counsel and to review discovery materials; and (3) Defendant’s constitutional right to a speedy trial was not violated in this case. View "Howard v. State" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of several criminal offenses, including second-degree assault of the intent-to-frighten type against Christine Johnson. The court of special appeals affirmed. Defendant appealed, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to support the conviction for second-degree assault of the intent-to-frighten type because Defendant did not know of Johnson’s presence in the apartment at the time of the assault. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding (1) a defendant can commit second-degree assault of the intent-to-frighten type against a victim of whose presence in particular the defendant does not know; and (2) the evidence to sufficient to support a finding that Defendant knew multiple people were in the apartment. View "Jones v. State" on Justia Law

Respondent was charged with sexual abuse of a minor and related offenses. Prior to trial, Respondent sought, by means of a subpoena duces tecum, access to the victim’s mental health records. The trial court denied Respondent’s request for an in camera review of those records, concluding that Respondent did not sufficiently establish the likelihood that the records sought would provide exculpatory evidence, as required by Goldsmith v. State. Picking up where Goldsmith left off, the Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) a criminal defendant’s trial rights may prevail over a victim’s right to assert a privilege in his or her mental health records; (2) a criminal defendant is entitled to an in camera review of a victim’s mental health records if the defendant can establish a reasonable likelihood that the privileged records contain exculpatory information relevant to the defense; and (3) in this case, Respondent’s proffer did not meet the required threshold, and therefore, he was not entitled to review the victim’s counseling records. View "State v. Johnson" on Justia Law

Two years after she was raped, the victim reported her suspicion that Petitioner was the rapist. Petitioner went to the police station for an interview but refused to provide a DNA sample. After Petitioner left the station, the police took swabs of the armrests of the chair in which he had sat and submitted those swabs for DNA analysis. That DNA sample matched DNA collected from the victim’s home on the day of the rape. Petitioner was charged with first-degree rape and related offenses. Petitioner filed a pre-trial motion seeking suppression of the DNA evidence. The suppression court denied the motion, concluding that Petitioner had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the DNA evidence left on the chair. The court of special appeals affirmed the denial of the suppression motion. Petitioner filed a petition for a writ of certiorari but conceded that the police lawfully obtained his genetic material from the armrests of the chair. The issue before the Court of appeals was whether law enforcement’s testing of the identifying loci within that DNA material was a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the DNA testing at issue was not a search under the Fourth Amendment. View "Raynor v. State" on Justia Law

In 1995, Petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. In 2006, the Supreme Court determined in Clemons v. State that, under the Frye-Reed standard, Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis (CBLA) evidence was not generally accepted by the scientific community. Within a few years of his conviction, Petitioner sought post-conviction relief, arguing that the admission of “unreliable” CBLA evidence during his trial in the form of testimony from Agent Ernest Peele of the Federal Bureau of Investigation constituted a due process violation and that his attorneys provided ineffective assistance for failing adequately to cross-examine Agent Peele. The circuit judge denied relief, and the court of special appeals affirmed. The Court of Appeals reversed Petitioner’s conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding that Petitioner’s attorneys rendered ineffective assistance when they failed to investigate a report Peele co-authored in 1991 that presaged the flaws in CBLA evidence and to challenge the State’s scientific evidence on cross-examination at trial. View "Kulbicki v. State" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Petitioner was convicted of one count each of first degree rape, second degree rape, second degree assault, and false imprisonment. The court of special appeals affirmed. The Court of Appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part, holding (1) the circuit court did not err when it excluded from evidence a police report that contained a prior allegedly inconsistent statement of the complaining witness; (2) even if the trial court erred in failing to strike testimony of an expert forensic nurse, the error was harmless; and (3) under the facts of this case, Petitioner’s conviction for false imprisonment should be merged into his conviction for first degree rape. Remanded. View "Brooks v. State" on Justia Law

In Doe I, the Supreme Court held that the retroactive application of the provisions in the Maryland sex offender registration statute that the Court deemed punitive violated the prohibition against ex post facto laws in the Maryland Declaration of Rights. At issue in this appeal was whether sex offenders’ federal obligations require them independently to register and whether circuit courts have the authority to order the State to remove sex offender registration information from federal databases. The Supreme Court held that, notwithstanding the registration obligations placed directly on individuals by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, circuit courts have the authority to compel the State to remove sex offender registration information from Maryland’s sex offender registry when the inclusion of such information is unconstitutional as established in Doe I. View "Dep’t of Pub. Safety v. Doe" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with one count of murder in the first degree. The case proceeded to trial. During the jury’s deliberations and at 5 p.m. on the Friday before a three-holiday weekend, the foreperson of the jury submitted a note to the trial judge claiming that a fellow juror stated that she was willing to change her original position of voting “not guilty” if she could go home and not return to the courthouse. One-half of an hour later, the judge reminded the jurors of their proper duties. The following Tuesday, the jury found Defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. Defendant appealed, arguing that the trial judge should have granted a mistrial based on the allegations in the note. The court of special appeals disagreed with Defendant and affirmed. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the trial judge, in dealing with the note, (1) did not abuse her discretion in denying Defendant’s motion for a mistrial and in refusing to give a modified Allen instruction; and (2) did not violate Maryland Rule 4-326(d) by recessing for the long weekend after giving additional instructions to the jurors. View "Nash v. State" on Justia Law