JOSHUA GABRIEL PRINCE v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Special Appeals, Nazarian, Filed Feb. 26, 2014,
Lay Opinion- Where an officer placed “trajectory rods” into holes fired into a car and photographed them, not expert opinion where he testified as to that attempt to reconstruct the trajectory of the bullet

Most of this opinion was about defense’s failure to properly preserve various objections (primarily related to admittance of expert opinion)

The interesting part of the opinion concerns the admittance as lay opinion of testimony by an officer who “reconstructed” the trajectory of the bullet. The court reasoned that the testimony was not expert opinion because the officer “relied on his own observations and placed the rods into the holes made by the bullet,” and he “conducted no experiments, made no attempts at reconstruction, and ‘was not conveying information that required a specialized or scientific knowledge to understand.'”

In essence, the testimony did not amount to more than a rod showing the path between two holes.

Other notes from the case:
Objection- An objection must be made “quickly enough to allow the trial court to prevent mistakes or cure them in real time”
Harmless Error- Harmless error if expert opinion improperly allowed absent expert qualification where there was abundant evidence supporting the conviction (witness testimony, text messages, confession, etc)
Lay Opinion- “training and experience” do not automatically render an opinion an expert opinion
Lay Opinion- The mere fact that a witness is a law enforcement officer does not automatically transform his testimony into expert testimony