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Appeals court presses prosecution on CJIS, fingerprint foundation in Eberhardt gun-conviction challenge
Summary
In Commonwealth v. Eberhardt, defense counsel told the appeals panel the prosecution failed to lay adequate foundation linking a fingerprint card and CJIS search results to the defendant’s date of birth; the Commonwealth said Detective Perez was certified and trained but gaps remained in his knowledge of how records are entered and maintained.
Attorney Mary Myles, representing appellant Anthony Eberhardt, told the State Appeals Court that the Commonwealth “failed to present substantive evidence of the defendant’s date of birth,” and that the fingerprint card and CJIS search relied on at trial lacked the foundation tying that datum to the person who sat before the jury. The argument came during oral argument in Commonwealth v. Eberhardt on procedural questions about admissibility and the sufficiency of the government’s foundation for database search results.
The dispute centers on testimony by Detective Perez and admission of a fingerprint card. Myles argued the Commonwealth offered multiple dates of birth and spellings during its investigation and that no one testified that the birth date on the fingerprint card definitively belonged to Eberhardt. The defense asked…
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