State of Arizona v. Joseph Javier Romero

Chief Justice BALES,

opinion of the Court.

¶ 1 The State’s evidence supporting the conviction of Joseph Javier Romero included testimony by a firearms examiner, based on a toolmark comparison, that a certain pistol had fired six shell casings found at the murder scene. We consider whether the trial court abused its discretion by precluding Romero from offering expert testimony that firearms examiners use subjective rather than scientifically rigorous methods in drawing conclusions from indentations on shell casings. Because Romero’s expert witness was qualified and his testimony would have been…