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Reed v. Maryland9/6/1978
e ground that it would be improper to draw an inference of paternity where merely the possibility is shown. Obviously, the same reasoning would apply in a criminal case." Id. at 592 (footnotes omitted).
In Shanks v. State, 185 Md. 437, 45 A.2d 85 (1945), evidence that the blood type of a rape victim was the same as that of stains on the defendant's coat, viz., Type O, was admitted by the trial court, in spite of testimony that 45 percent of the population has Type O blood. In his brief in this Court the defendant referred to scientific opinion that blood tests should not be admissible to show possible identification:
"Dr. Flack in his article 'The Forensic Value of Blood Tests in Evidence' discussing the legal significance of these tests says:
'The test, if positive in result, is affirmative proof excluding a possible parent and as such should be admissible. If negative in result the test simply indicates that the party examined could have been the parent and no more. Such an assertion obviously has no probative value whatsoever since any of the million who fall in the same blood classification could have been the parent as well. Consequently, these negative results must be disregarded and rigidly excluded from evidence as being valueless and prejudicial.'
"Referring to these tests as applied to criminal cases generally, Dr. Flack suggests further
'Evidence of this nature should be used solely for the purposes of exclusion since negative value proves nothing and exclusion constitutes prejudice.'
23 A.B.A.J. 472." Appellant's brief at 11.
Our predecessors were not persuaded that testimony should not be admissible unless the results were conclusive. Chief Judge Marbury said for the Court, "The objection of remoteness goes to the weight of the evidence rather than to its admissibility. To exclude evidence merely because it tends to establish a possibility, rather than a probability, would
produce curious results not heretofore thought of." 185 Md. at 446. The Supreme Court of New Jersey reached the same conclusion in State v. Beard, 16 N. J. 50, 106 A.2d 265, 268-69 (1954).
A student comment on Shanks conceded that the challenged evidence was logically relevant, but argued that such scientific evidence should have been excluded nonetheless:
"Perhaps, as the court points out, blood groups may now be matters of common knowledge. But it should be remembered that our most noted sociologists agree that scientific knowledge is far in advance of the public awareness of its significance. The very multiplicity of facts that crowd in upon the layman serves to confuse him more. His knowledge, therefore, is as superficial and uncoordinated as it is diversified. He does not understand science -- all he knows is that science has produced the miraculous sulfas and penicillin and now the world has been terrified by the discovery of atomic power. As a consequence, science has become to him a magic power. He feels that science can do anything. Why, then, with this feeling prevalent among the people who make up our juries should we expect our jurists to become suddenly cognizant of the true worth of scientific facts which may be more or less pertinent to the cases presented to them: It is conceivable that an innocent person might be convicted because blood on his suit coincided in type with that of the victim of a crime. That coincidence is not enough in itself to convict a man. But a jury, overly impressed with a misconception of the value of scientific facts, may be misled and hand down verdicts that are unjust.
"Wher
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