Maryland v. Kulbicki, 136 S. Ct. 2

Background

In 1993 James Kulbicki shot his 22‑year‑old mistress; at his 1995 trial FBI Agent Ernest Peele testified using Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis (CBLA) linking bullet fragments to bullets associated with Kulbicki’s truck and gun. The jury convicted Kulbicki of first‑degree murder.
Years later CBLA fell into disrepute; Maryland appellate decisions (notably Clemons) eventually held CBLA evidence inadmissible as generally unsupported by the scientific community.
Kulbicki brought a postconviction ineffective‑assistance claim, arguing trial counsel should have challenged CBLA; he later abandoned some claims but pressed that counsel failed to discover a 1991 report coauthored by Peele showing overlapping lead compositions across different bullet batches.
The Maryland Court of Appeals held counsel were constitutionally ineffective for not finding and using that 1991 report to impeach CBLA, vacated the conviction, and ordered a new trial.
The U.S. Supreme Court (per curiam) granted certiorari and reversed, holding the state court erred by judging counsel with the benefit of hindsight and imposing an unreasonable obligation to predict the later repudiation of CBLA.

Issues

Issue	Kulbicki's Argument	Maryland's / State's Argument	Held
Whether counsel were constitutionally ineffective for failing to uncover and use a 1991 report to impeach CBLA	Counsel should have found the report and exposed its methodological flaw, undermining Peele’s testimony	Counsel fell below prevailing professional norms by not discovering/using the report; error was prejudicial	No — counsel’s performance was not deficient given contemporary acceptance of CBLA and uncertain availability/impact of the report
Whether counsel must anticipate and litigate scientific challenges that emerged after trial	Yes — failing to attack CBLA deprived Kulbicki of effective representation	Trial counsel had an obligation to investigate the reliability of forensic methods used against the defendant	No — courts must assess counsel’s conduct based on standards and knowledge at the time of trial, not later developments
Whether a diligent search would have located the 1991 report pretrial	The report was available and thus discoverable in 1995	The report was publicly distributed by 1994 and therefore available to counsel	Unresolved positively by state court but Supreme Court found no basis to conclude counsel unreasonably failed to find it given practical obstacles and evidence scarcity
Whether any deficiency was prejudicial under Strickland	Discovery/use of the report would likely have changed the outcome	The report’s impeachment would have undermined key forensic evidence and prejudiced the jury	Supreme Court did not decide prejudice; resolved case on lack of deficient performance

Key Cases Cited

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963) (Sixth Amendment guarantee of counsel applies to states)
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) (two‑part deficient‑performance and prejudice test for IAC)
Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U.S. 364 (1993) (advocates contemporary assessment of counsel’s conduct; caution against Monday‑morning quarterbacking)
Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374 (2005) (limits on counsel’s duty to search for potentially exculpatory materials without reasonable indicia)
Yarborough v. Gentry, 540 U.S. 1 (2003) (clarifies standard of reasonable competence for counsel)
United States v. Higgs, 663 F.3d 726 (4th Cir. 2011) (discusses historical admissibility of CBLA evidence)
Clemons v. State, 392 Md. 339 (Md. 2006) (state court decision holding CBLA evidence not generally accepted and thus inadmissible)