A Maryland judge?s groundbreaking decision to disallow fingerprint evidence is not spreading like wildfire through the court system ? at least according to a Baltimore County ruling Wednesday.
Circuit Judge Patrick Cavanaugh ruled Wednesday that fingerprint evidence will be allowed in the case against Kevin Banks, 22, of Baltimore, who is accused of robbing and murdering a man in Woodlawn in March.
Cavanaugh said he “respectfully disagreed” with a ruling by a different Baltimore County judge who recently decided that fingerprints were too unreliable to be used in death penalty cases.
“We think Judge Cavanaugh?s ruling was correct based on the law and evidence in the case before him,” said Deputy State?s Attorney Leo Ryan. “Judge Cavanaugh recognized there is no dispute in the forensic community concerning the value of fingerprints as an evidentiary tool. The only dispute exists in the minds of criminal defense attorneys and academics.”
Defense attorneys were attempting to have fingerprint evidence thrown out in the state?s case against Banks, who allegedly killed Jamar Mackie in Woodlawn on March 31.
Mackie and a friend, Derrick Williams, were talking together on Walden Poplar Court when Banks and another man approached them and robbed them at gunpoint, prosecutors said.
As the suspects attempted to flee, they were chased by a pit bull ? causing one suspect to leap onto the trunk of a Chrysler Sebring to avoid being bitten. Banks? fingerprints were later recovered from the Sebring, according to prosecutors.
Banks also was identified as a suspect in a Baltimore City shooting on Koko Lane in which criminals used the same gun and type of getaway car only three days before Mackie?s killing, prosecutors said.
“It would defy logic ? to believe that it is merely coincidence that several of the defendant?s fingerprints were found on the very car that one of the suspect?s clearly touched and the defendant just happened to be in a similar suspect vehicle with the same gun and with the identified murderer just three days before the murder,” Baltimore County State?s Attorney Scott Shellenberger wrote in a court filing.
Shellenberger is contesting a ruling from a different Baltimore County judge ? Circuit Judge Susan Souder ? who disallowed prosecutors from using fingerprint evidence against Bryan Rose, 23, who is facing the death penalty in the 2006 carjacking and slaying of merchant Warren Fleming, 31, outside Security Square Mall.
In her ruling, Souder cited as evidence of fingerprints? flaws the FBI?s “infamous, erroneous” 2004 misidentification of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield as an Algerian terrorist.
Rose?s attorneys have praised Souder?s ruling and suggested other judges follow suit. They say fingerprints are a pseudoscience that can?t be trusted and lack “serious scrutiny,” according to Patrick Kent, the head of the Maryland Public Defender?s Forensics Division.
