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Virginia Supreme Court Reverses Murder Convictions Over Excluded Expert Testimony
https://virginiaappeals.org/2025/03/20/welsh-v-commonwealth-record-no-230800-va-mar-20-2025/
In today’s sole opinion from the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Court reversed a defendant’s murder convictions, finding that the trial court improperly excluded critical expert testimony that could have influenced the jury’s decision.
The case centered on Welsh’s convictions for the murders of Rishi Manwani and his mother Mala, for which Welsh had received two life sentences plus additional time for firearms charges. Welsh, struggling with drug addiction and financial problems, had been a regular customer of Rishi Manwani. In January 2018, both Manwanis were found dead from multiple gunshot wounds, with evidence suggesting Welsh had been at their residence around the time of the murders. A key piece of the prosecution’s case was testimony from Cara McCarthy, a firearms expert who concluded that Welsh’s Browning Buck Mark .22 pistol matched the cartridge casings found at the crime scene “to a practical certainty,” though she noted that the barrel appeared to have been switched.
The legal issue arose when Welsh attempted to call his own firearms expert, William Tobin, who had 27 years of FBI experience and extensive qualifications in firearms analysis. The trial court prohibited Tobin from testifying, reasoning that his testimony would improperly comment on McCarthy’s credibility and challenge scientific principles the court had already accepted. The Supreme Court disagreed, finding that Tobin’s criticisms of McCarthy’s methodology did not constitute improper opinion on her credibility under Rule 2:702, but rather represented a legitimate “battle of the experts” that should have been presented to the jury.
In its harmless error analysis, the majority concluded that this error was not harmless because McCarthy’s testimony was central to the Commonwealth’s case—indeed, prosecutors had described her as their “most significant witness.” The scientific nature of the evidence likely carried considerable weight with jurors, and denying Welsh the opportunity to present expert criticism of the methodology linking him to the murder weapon created significant doubt about whether the jury would have reached the same verdict absent the error.
Three justices dissented on the harmless error analysis, agreeing that the trial court erred but concluding that this error was harmless given the substantial other evidence against Welsh. Regardless, the majority’s decision reversed the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings, potentially setting the stage for a retrial where Welsh’s expert will be permitted to testify.