Background
On the night of November 13, 2019, six men surrounded Donnell Brockington in Baltimore City and shot him ten to twelve times. Four suspects — including William Thornton and James Dunbar — were apprehended after their getaway vehicle crashed. Police recovered five firearms; DNA from Thornton, Dunbar, and a co-defendant was found on a Desert Eagle 9mm pistol recovered from the vehicle. At their joint November–December 2022 trial, the State’s firearms examiner testified that shell casings, a bullet, and bullet fragments recovered from the scene “were fired with” the Desert Eagle. None of the four defendants — each represented by separate counsel — filed a pretrial Daubert motion, requested a reliability hearing, or objected to the examiner’s unqualified opinion.
Seven months after trial, the Supreme Court of Maryland decided Abruquah v. State, 483 Md. 637 (2023), holding on the evidentiary record before it that the AFTE methodology could support a “consistent with” opinion but not an unqualified identification. Respondents conceded the issue was unpreserved and sought plain-error review. The Appellate Court of Maryland reversed their convictions, concluding the examiner’s testimony “was exactly the kind of testimony that Abruquah prohibits.” Separately, Thornton challenged the trial court’s decision to fully close the courtroom during jury deliberations and to permit only limited family attendance for the verdict, a response to three escalating incidents of spectator misconduct culminating in a co-defendant’s father approaching a sitting juror. The Appellate Court rejected that claim, finding the closures de minimis.
The Supreme Court of Maryland granted certiorari on both issues.
The Court’s Holding
On the firearms identification issue, the Court reversed the Appellate Court and reinstated the convictions. Plain-error review demands that an error be “clear or obvious, rather than subject to reasonable dispute.” Beckwitt v. State, 477 Md. 398, 464 (2022). That standard was not met here. At the time of trial, Maryland had recently replaced the Frye-Reed general-acceptance test with Daubert (Rochkind v. Stevenson, 2020), Abruquah was pending before the Court and publicly reported, and the admissibility of unqualified AFTE opinions under the new framework was entirely unresolved. At the time of appeal, Abruquah itself confirmed this unsettlement: the opinion expressly limited its holding to “the evidence presented at the hearings,” acknowledged that additional studies could alter the analysis, and declined to create a categorical rule. Where reasonable judges could disagree about whether a per se prohibition exists, admission of the contested testimony cannot constitute clear or obvious error — and plain-error review does not exist to rescue litigants from strategic inaction when the legal landscape was uncertain.
On the public trial issue, the Court adopted the Kelly v. State, 195 Md. App. 403 (2010), framework for evaluating whether a closure is de minimis and agreed with the defendants that the closures here were not de minimis. Nevertheless, the Court affirmed the rejection of Thornton’s Sixth Amendment claim because the closures satisfied the four-part test of Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39 (1984). The trial court identified an overriding interest in juror safety and the integrity of deliberations, supported by three documented and escalating incidents of spectator misconduct — including Instagram photos of bench conferences posted with the hashtag “free dem boys,” a disturbance between families outside the courthouse, and a co-defendant’s father approaching and shaking hands with a sitting juror. The court individually voir dired all twelve jurors, considered and rejected less restrictive alternatives, and calibrated its response by reopening the courtroom for the verdict with equitable limits on family attendance. The closure was no broader than necessary.
Key Takeaways
- Abruquah v. State is a case-specific Daubert ruling, not a per se prohibition on all unqualified firearms identification testimony; its reach depends on the evidentiary record presented in each case.
- Defense counsel who fail to file a Daubert motion or object at trial cannot use plain-error review to obtain a new trial based on a post-verdict Daubert decision when the law was unsettled at both the time of trial and the time of appeal.
- Maryland now formally adopts the Kelly framework for assessing whether a courtroom closure is de minimis, but even non-de-minimis closures can survive Sixth Amendment scrutiny if they satisfy Waller‘s four-part test.
- Documented, escalating spectator misconduct — particularly direct contact between a spectator and a juror — can constitute an “overriding interest” sufficient to justify closure under Waller.
Why It Matters
This decision significantly limits the reach of Abruquah for defendants seeking to challenge firearms identification evidence through post-trial appellate review. By characterizing Abruquah as a case-specific Daubert determination rather than a categorical rule, the Court signals that prosecutors may be able to defend unqualified AFTE opinions in future cases by building a stronger evidentiary record at a pretrial hearing — and that defense attorneys who forgo Daubert challenges at trial do so at their peril. The decision also underscores that plain-error review is a narrow safety valve, not an alternative appellate strategy for claims counsel chose not to raise.
On the public trial front, the Court’s adoption of the Kelly de minimis framework and its application of Waller to spectator-misconduct-driven closures provides Maryland trial courts clearer guidance for a recurring and difficult situation: balancing open-court principles against genuine threats to juror safety. The ruling confirms that courts need not wait for a completed act of juror tampering before acting, so long as they document escalating incidents, consider less restrictive alternatives, and tailor any closure carefully.