Santiago v. State, 181 A.3d 796

Victim LaToya Taylor disappeared June 13, 2003; her body was later found with a gunshot wound. A Jeep Cherokee registered to Isa Manuel Santiago was burned soon after.
Physical evidence (carpet fibers, grass in undercarriage) connected the Jeep to the body site; surveillance and witness statements placed Santiago in the relevant timeframe/place.
Prosecutors sought to use Santiago’s 2003 Cingular cell‑phone call detail records (CDRs) to place him near the crime; Cingular’s network engineer Allen Hagy analyzed the records and concluded reassignments (“rehoming”) caused switch-number errors in the CDRs and adjusted them using a contemporaneous database he had compiled (the "2003 Index").
The 2003 Index was used at the 2006 trial but was destroyed before the 2015 retrial; Santiago moved to exclude Hagy’s testimony for lack of an available underlying database and for alleged methodological unreliability.
Separately, Santiago filed a voluntary insurance claim that State Farm denied after he failed to submit to an examination under oath; the prosecution introduced those State Farm records as evidence of consciousness of guilt.
Trial court admitted Hagy’s expert testimony (finding sufficient factual basis despite the destroyed index) and admitted the State Farm records; Santiago was convicted at a third trial and appealed. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

Issue	Santiago's Argument	State's Argument	Held
Sufficiency of factual basis for expert cell‑phone testimony under Md. Rule 5‑702	Hagy lacked a reproducible, adequate factual basis because the 2003 Index was destroyed and his analysis depended on untestable assumptions (e.g., radio channels accurate but switches wrong)	Hagy’s long experience, first‑hand knowledge of Cingular’s network, and his explanation of methodology provided an adequate factual basis; loss of the index affects weight, not admissibility	Admitted: court found Hagy’s experience, methodology, and the available data provided a sufficient factual basis; absence of the index goes to weight, not admissibility
Admissibility of State Farm records (failure to submit to examination under oath) and Fifth Amendment protection	Introduction of silence could be ambiguous or protected by the Fifth Amendment; silence may have innocent explanations and parallel pre‑arrest silence cases	Santiago voluntarily filed the claim (no compulsion or police presence); failure to cooperate with insurer was probative of consciousness of guilt and not unduly prejudicial under Rule 5‑403	Admitted: no Fifth Amendment violation (no compulsion); evidence relevant to consciousness of guilt and probative value not substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice

Payne v. State, 440 Md. 680 (2014) (explains historical cell‑site analysis and that CDRs require expert interpretation)
Roy v. Dackman, 445 Md. 23 (2015) (trial court has wide discretion over admissibility of expert testimony)
U.S. Gypsum Co. v. Mayor of Baltimore, 336 Md. 145 (1994) (lack of raw underlying data affects weight, not admissibility, of expert testimony)
Weitzel v. State, 384 Md. 451 (2004) (pre‑arrest silence in police presence is not admissible as substantive evidence of guilt because it is ambiguous)
Snyder v. State, 361 Md. 580 (2000) (posturing that failure to inquire about an investigation is too ambiguous to infer consciousness of guilt without additional context)