After maligning BIGLAW and those that would defend the unlucky, Cully Stimson resigned. So, where would this guy go? Look below the fold.
The Heritage Foundation, of course. I don’t see how he can be an expert in anything, buy hey, the Heritage Foundation needs to attract donors, so it provides a form of legal asylum.
His “writings” are, quite frankly, comical. They seem to be written for a non-lawyer audience.
Consider this:
Stimson complains about the exclusion of some fingerprints in a Maryland state court. Never mind the ongoing controversy about the admissibility of “match” testimony. He claim to cites some precedent. Only because he is talking down to his reader (who seem to be useless non-lawyers), he doesn’t provide the actual cite. Nor does he provide the text of the opinion that he doesn’t like. Heck, he doesn’t even provide a docket number. Because I don't hate my audience the way Stimson hates his, you can read the underlying case here (Court will grant the Motion because the State did not prove in this case that opinion testimony by experts regarding the ACE-V method of latent print identification rests on a reliable factual foundation as required by MD Rule 5-702).
Fingerprints, in short, have a long and dependable history. The science of reading a fingerprint has proven to be reliable to judges in every country, and indeed in every state in the United States. You and I rely on fingerprint evidence everyday to keep us safe. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion [ Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721 (1969)] written in 1969 by Justice William Brennan said fingerprint evidence is a "more reliable and effective crime-solving tool than eyewitness identifications and confessions."
Perhaps the Maryland trial judge forgot to read that case .
He seems to be arguing that state courts, applying their own rules of evidence, are bound by the Supreme Court’s precedent regarding Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721 (1969). The problem is that 1) Davis simply holds that collecting fingerprints from a defendant are subject to the constraints of the Fourth Amendment; and 2) even if this was an evidentiary ruling, state courts in Maryland would not be bound to admit the prosecution’s fingerprint evidence! (Maybe they would be bound to admit defense evidence on due process grounds, but that isn't the issue in any case.)
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