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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS
No. 25-CO-0361
ANTHONY FALTZ, APPELLANT,
V.
UNITED STATES, APPELLEE.
Appeal from the Superior Court
of the District of Columbia
(2006-CF1-004490)
(Erik P. Christian, Judge)
(Argued May 14, 2026 Decided September 24, 2026)
James Millikan, with whom Leslie W. Kostyshak, Matthew J. Revis, and Katie Tanzola were on the briefs, for appellant.
David P. Saybolt, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Jeanine Ferris Pirro, United States Attorney, and Chrisellen R. Kolb, Nicholas P. Coleman, and Kacie Weston, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.
Before DEAHL, HOWARD, and SHANKER, Associate Judges.
SHANKER, Associate Judge: For over a decade, appellant Anthony Faltz has
sought a judicial determination that he is actually innocent of the crime to which he
pled guilty in 2006: recklessly smashing a stolen Ford Crown Victoria into the side
of a Nissan Altima, killing its occupants, and thereby committing involuntary
2
manslaughter. While Mr. Faltz was unquestionably in the Ford when the crash
occurred, police eyewitness accounts of the accident initially identified a different
vehicle occupant, Dorrell Ingram, as the driver. The investigation’s focus shifted—
and Mr. Faltz pled guilty—only after Mr. Faltz’s DNA was found in the center of
the Ford’s driver’s-side airbag. Years later, however, advances in forensic DNA
identification techniques uncovered a second DNA sample from Dorrell Ingram in
a different location on that same airbag, prompting Mr. Faltz to file a petition under
D.C.’s Innocence Protection Act (IPA), D.C. Code § 22-4135.
We remanded the trial court’s prior denial of Mr. Faltz’s IPA petition in Faltz
v. United States (Faltz I), 318 A.3d 338 (D.C. 2024), and on remand the trial court
again denied the petition. In this second appeal, Mr. Faltz argues that the trial court
improperly admitted the government’s expert testimony and made a number of legal
and factual errors when it determined that he had not established his actual innocence
by a preponderance of the evidence. He also asks that we reassign this case on
remand.
In light of our deferential standard of review of the trial court’s gatekeeping
function for expert testimony, we conclude that the trial court acted within its
discretion in admitting that testimony and we affirm that decision. But because the
trial court improperly exercised its discretion by ignoring exculpatory evidence,
3
failing to probe the weaknesses in the expert testimony it admitted, and improperly
assessing Mr. Faltz’s own testimony, we vacate the trial court’s denial of Mr. Faltz’s
IPA petition and remand again. We also direct that the case be reassigned to a
different judge on remand.
I. Background
This appeal arises out of Mr. Faltz’s 2006 convictions, following a guilty plea,
for involuntary manslaughter and his subsequent efforts for post-conviction relief.
We do not repeat the full factual and procedural background of this case as set forth
in Faltz I. Instead, we highlight as much of the earlier background as is necessary to
explain the context for this decision.
A. The Crash and the Guilty Plea
On February 19, 2002, a stolen Ford Crown Victoria containing Mr. Faltz and
twin brothers Dorrell and Darryl Ingram crashed into a Nissan Maxima as the three
men fled the police, killing the two people inside the Nissan. See Faltz I, 318 A.3d
at 341. Conflicting accounts as to who was driving the Ford at the time of the
accident form the factual and legal core of this case.
Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Officers Gregory Phifer and Herman
Hodges witnessed the accident from one or two blocks away and reached the vehicle
4
within seconds of the crash. Id. at 342. Both officers testified that they saw the driver
emerge from the driver’s seat and run into a nearby wooded area. Id. The officers
eventually arrested the man, whom they later identified as Dorrell Ingram. Id. MPD
officers also identified the rear passenger as Mr. Faltz and the front passenger as
Darryl Ingram. Id. In written reports, an MPD detective noted that Dorrell Ingram
was identified as the driver “[d]ue to the overwhelming available physical evidence
and witness observations.” Id.
After initially charging Dorrell Ingram with second-degree murder as the
driver of the car, the government changed tack once DNA testing of a sample
recovered from the center of the driver’s side airbag excluded Dorrell Ingram as a
DNA contributor and showed that Mr. Faltz’s DNA could not be excluded as a
match. Id. The FBI’s lab report from that time also stated that the sample “contained
DNA from more than one individual.” Id. Because this 2003 DNA testing appeared
to point to Mr. Faltz as the driver of the car, Mr. Faltz was charged with seconddegree murder and all charges against the Ingram brothers were dropped. Id.
Mr. Faltz pled guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter after his
court-appointed attorney, Ferris Bond, told him that his DNA was “all over the
airbag” and that he would likely receive a maximum fifteen-year sentence if he took
the deal. Id. At the plea hearing, neither the government nor Mr. Faltz expressly
5
stated that he was the driver of the Ford; the government’s proffer of facts stated
only, as relevant here, that officers saw Mr. Faltz coming out of the car’s “rear door”
but that it was later discovered that “DNA found on the driver’s air bag . . . was a
match to Mr. Faltz’s DNA profile,” and Mr. Faltz agreed that those facts were true.
After his plea and before his sentencing, Mr. Faltz provided a statement to the writer
of his Presentence Report (PSR) maintaining that he was not the driver. Id. at 343.
When the writer asked why he pled guilty if he was not the driver, Mr. Faltz
responded, “I didn’t think it was a winnable case.” Id. Mr. Faltz also submitted a
letter to the court in which he expressed regret at having “been the cause of someone
losing their li[fe].”
The trial court sentenced Mr. Faltz to sixteen years on each count of
involuntary manslaughter, to run consecutively, for a total of thirty-two years of
incarceration. Id.
B. Innocence Protection Act Proceedings
In April 2015, Mr. Faltz moved to have the DNA evidence retested pursuant
to the IPA after seeing a Washington Post article calling into question DNA results
from the District of Columbia’s crime lab. Id. In June 2016, fourteen years after the
original FBI testing of the DNA on the airbag, a private forensics laboratory—Bode
Cellmark—retested the DNA from the Ford’s driver’s-side airbag. Id. at 344. Bode’s
6
report confirmed that Mr. Faltz’s DNA was on the center of the airbag, but it
identified a second sample on the right edge of the airbag with DNA profiles of at
least two people. Id. Due to the poor quality of the second sample, however, Bode
did not interpret the results such that it could identify the specific contributors to the
DNA sample. Id.
Mr. Faltz then approached an expert, Dr. Norah Rudin, to interpret the second
DNA sample using a previously unavailable method called “probabilistic
genotyping,” which assigns likelihoods to DNA profiles rather than a binary
“match/no match” approach. Id. Dr. Rudin determined that evidence supporting the
presence of Dorrell Ingram’s DNA in the second sample from the edge of the airbag
was “about 100 times stronger” than that of Mr. Faltz. Id.
With this new evidence, Mr. Faltz pursued an IPA claim alongside claims for
ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) under D.C. Code § 23-110 against both his
trial counsel and his postconviction counsel. Id. At a 2022 hearing on the IPA and
IAC claims, Mr. Faltz testified that he had told Mr. Bond that he was not the driver
and thus wanted to go to trial. Id. at 342. Mr. Faltz stated that he was in the backseat
“probably behind the driver or sitting in the middle” and that Dorrell Ingram was
driving the Ford. Id. Mr. Faltz also testified that he had been leaning slightly forward
during the chase, was thrown forward during the collision, and did not know whether
7
he hit the driver’s-side airbag. Id. He stated that after the crash he attempted to get
out of the car through the right rear passenger door but an injury to his right hip
prevented him from getting far. Id.
Mr. Faltz also testified that he pled guilty because he had been told that his
DNA was all over the airbag, that the Ingram brothers were planning to testify that
he was the driver, and that he would likely receive a fifteen-year sentence, and he
added that he would not have pled guilty if he had known that Dorrell Ingram’s DNA
was also present on the airbag. Id. at 342, 344. He stated that Mr. Bond did not
explain involuntary manslaughter to him or tell him that he had to be the driver to
be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and that he never told Mr. Bond that he
was the driver. In response to the trial court’s question why Mr. Faltz would have
pled guilty to manslaughter if he was just a passenger, Mr. Faltz’s attorney said that
Mr. Faltz understood that he was pleading guilty to manslaughter rather than murder
because he was a passenger, and that he was never identified as the driver during the
plea colloquy. The court again asked why Mr. Faltz would have pled guilty to having
killed two people if he knew he was not the driver, to which counsel responded that
Mr. Faltz believed that he was pleading guilty based on his involvement in the
conduct that killed two people. The trial court then expressed doubt that someone
would plead guilty to a crime—even shoplifting of bubble gum—if they had not
committed the crime. Finally, the court asked why Mr. Faltz did not deny being the
8
driver of the car when the government asserted as much at sentencing; Mr. Faltz’s
counsel explained that Mr. Faltz told the PSR writer that he was not the driver and
that at the point of sentencing he did not want to undo the plea and go to trial on a
murder charge with Mr. Bond representing him.
Mr. Faltz and the government presented the testimony and reports of several
expert witnesses at the 2022 hearing. Id. at 344-45. First, Mr. Faltz’s expert Dr.
Rudin testified about her interpretation of the DNA sample using probabilistic
genotyping. Id. at 344. The government presented its own DNA expert, Dr. Bruce
Budowle, who critiqued Dr. Rudin’s methodology for crediting false “peaks” in the
sample. Id. Nevertheless, Dr. Budowle agreed that Dorrell Ingram was a likely
contributor, along with Mr. Faltz, to the sample on the edge of the airbag. Id.
Second, on the issue of accident reconstruction, Mr. Faltz presented expert C.
Gregory Russell, and the government presented two expert witnesses, Michael
Miller and Brian Chase. Id. The government’s experts testified that, based on their
reconstruction of the manner in which the crash occurred, the center of the Ford’s
airbag would have collided directly with the driver’s facial area, which suggested
that the presence of Mr. Faltz’s DNA on the center of the airbag showed that he was
the driver. Id. at 344-45. Mr. Faltz’s expert testified that the crash instead flung the
Ford’s occupants diagonally and to the left, which would have caused the driver to
9
miss the center of the airbag and could have caused a backseat passenger (like Mr.
Faltz) to make contact with the center of the airbag. Id. at 345.
The trial court denied Mr. Faltz’s IAC and IPA claims. See id.
C. Faltz I Appeal
On appeal, we affirmed the trial court’s disposition of Mr. Faltz’s IAC claims,
Faltz I, 318 A.3d at 345-47, but we remanded the IPA ruling, id. at 347-50. We
explained that “the nexus between evidence of Mr. Faltz’s innocence—including his
guilty plea—and the admitted expert testimony” required us to “consider both issues
together in reviewing the trial court’s assessment.” Id. at 347. We determined that
the trial court committed reversible error when it did not “substantively address the
admissibility of the experts’ testimony” under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 as
required by our en banc decision in Motorola Inc. v. Murray, 147 A.3d 751 (D.C.
2016) (en banc), and that the court “failed to grapple with the full set of evidence
presented” at the IPA hearings. Faltz I, 318 A.3d at 348-49. We therefore remanded
for the trial court to “conduct an analysis of the admissibility of the government’s
proffered expert testimony under [Motorola], and . . . to grapple with the full set of
evidence that Mr. Faltz presented of his innocence.” Id. at 347, 350.
10
D. Remand
On remand, the trial court once again found the accident reconstruction expert
evidence of both Mr. Chase and Mr. Miller admissible under Rule 702. Then, after
crediting that evidence, the court denied Mr. Faltz’s IPA petition. It concluded that
Mr. Faltz must have been the driver of the Ford at the time of the crash because “the
driver could not miss the airbag and the driver’s DNA is located on the center of the
airbag.”
Mr. Faltz timely appealed. He challenges both the trial court’s admission of
the government’s expert accident reconstruction evidence and the court’s ultimate
determination that he did not establish his actual innocence by a preponderance of
the evidence.
11
II. Analysis
A. Admissibility of the Government’s Expert Testimony1
Under Rule 702 and Motorola
1. Legal Framework and Standard of Review
In deciding the admissibility of expert testimony, a court must consider
whether:
(a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized
knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the
evidence or to determine a fact in issue;
(b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data;
(c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and
methods; and
(d) the expert has reliably applied the principles and
methods to the facts of the case.
Faltz I, 318 A.3d at 348 (quoting Motorola, 147 A.3d at 756); see Fed. R. Evid. 702.
“The Rule . . . elevates the trial judge’s role as gatekeeper; it essentially
provides that when a party proffers expert scientific testimony, the trial court must
1
Mr. Miller and Mr. Chase both formally adopted their written reports as part of their oral testimony during the 2022 hearing. Except where we note otherwise, we use “testimony” to refer to the expert evidence offered by Mr. Miller and Mr. Chase, which includes both their in-court statements and the written expert reports they adopted as part of their testimony.
12
make a preliminary assessment of whether the reasoning or methodology underlying
the testimony is scientifically valid.” Lewis v. United States, 263 A.3d 1049, 1059
(D.C. 2021) (citation modified). “Rule 702 expressly requires the trial court to
determine whether an expert reliably applied principles and methods to the case at
hand . . . .” Faltz I, 318 A.3d at 348 (citation modified). But this “more refined
gatekeeping role” does not permit a trial judge to “displace the normal tools of the
adversary system.” Motorola, 147 A.3d at 754. Instead, “[v]igorous crossexamination, presentation of contrary evidence, and careful instruction on the burden
of proof are the traditional and appropriate means of attacking shaky but admissible
evidence.” Id. (quoting Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 596
(1993)).
“Both the preliminary reliability determination and the manner in which it is
made are committed to the trial judge’s discretion, reviewable for abuse.” Lewis, 263
A.3d at 1059. “In reviewing for abuse of discretion, we must determine whether the
decision maker failed to consider a relevant factor, whether the decision maker relied
upon an improper factor, and whether the reasons given reasonably support the
conclusion.” Bishop v. United States, 310 A.3d 629, 641 (D.C. 2024) (citation
modified). In addition, the trial court must make “an informed choice . . . drawn
from a firm factual foundation.” Brooks v. United States, 993 A.2d 1090, 1093 (D.C.
2010) (citation modified). Although this standard is deferential, “there is an
13
important tradeoff for giving the trial court such latitude: that court must take no
shortcuts; it must exercise its discretion with reference to [a]ll the necessary criteria.”
Willis v. United States, 353 A.3d 874, 882 (D.C. 2026) (quoting Ibn-Tamas v. United
States, 407 A.2d 626, 635 (D.C. 1979)). Consequently, we “must not affirm a ruling
premised on trial court discretion unless the record clearly manifests either (1) that
the trial court has ruled on each essential criterion, or (2) that the trial court, as a
matter of law, had but one option.” Id.
2. Additional Background
Mr. Miller responded to the crash in his then-role as an MPD officer in the
Major Crash Investigations Unit. See Faltz I, 318 A.3d at 344. Although he did not
perform an accident reconstruction on the night of the collision, he did note his
observations of the crash and the vehicles and made a field sketch of the accident
scene. Id. at 344-45. In 2006, four years after the crash, Mr. Miller returned to the
scene to map the accident and create a report documenting the car’s moment-bymoment movements before, during, and after the crash. Id. at 345. His report stated,
and he later testified, that the Ford began rotating only after the airbags had fully
inflated, indicating that the crash impact caused the driver to hit the airbag head-on.
Id.
14
Mr. Chase’s testimony relied on Mr. Miller’s conclusions regarding how the
crash took place. He testified that the Ford’s airbag would have fully deployed 40
milliseconds after impact, before any rotation occurred, meaning that the driver
could not have missed the center of the airbag—where Mr. Faltz’s DNA was found.
Id.
The trial court found that Mr. Miller’s testimony was based on sufficient facts
or data despite the four-year gap between the crash and the report’s drafting because
“Mr. Miller referred to data collected the night of the crash including the forensic
paint, gauge and tire markings, field sketch, pictures, weights of the vehicles and
diagrams” and because “Mr. Miller testified that he did estimate speed and that
estimate was based on data collected the night of the crash.” The trial court found
that the testimony was the product of reliable principles and methods because Mr.
Miller examined the scene the night of the crash and took various measurements;
took 360-degree photos of the impounded vehicles; and used this data, along with
vehicle diagrams, to estimate the speed of Mr. Faltz’s vehicle. Finally, the trial court
concluded that Mr. Miller reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of
the case because he used his conclusions about the vehicle’s speed, along with his
knowledge of the size and deployment speed of the car’s airbags, to conclude that
the airbags would have fully deployed before the vehicle started to rotate and that
the driver of the vehicle would therefore have made contact with the airbag.
15
The trial court then explained that “the Miller and Chase reports rise and fall
with the reliability of the Miller report,” and it concluded that because Mr. Miller’s
testimony was based on sufficient facts or data, Mr. Chase’s was as well. It
concluded that Mr. Chase’s testimony was the product of reliable principles and
methods because his methods included “assessment of [ ] known physical evidence
associated with the sequence of crash events”; “accepted scientific crash
reconstruction and physical principles inclusive of occupant kinematics”;
“documented physical injuries sustained by defendant Anthony Faltz during the
crash events”; and “automotive technology design and operation characteristics” of
the vehicle’s airbag, along with Mr. Chase’s presence during the examination of the
airbags. Finally, it concluded that Mr. Chase’s opinion—that “for a severe frontal
impact, as in this case, the driver cannot miss contact with the airbag”—was the
result of a reliable application of these principles and methods to the facts of Mr.
Faltz’s case.
3. Discussion
Mr. Faltz argues that the testimony of the government’s accidentreconstruction experts was inadmissible because it was not based on sufficient data
and was the product of unreliable principles. See Fed. R. Evid. 702(b), (c). The
government asserts that the trial court properly exercised its discretion in admitting
16
the expert testimony and that Mr. Faltz’s arguments go to weight, not admissibility.
Applying our deferential standard of review to the trial court’s gatekeeper function
under Rule 702 and Motorola, we agree with the government.
a. Mr. Miller’s Evidence
Mr. Faltz primarily argues that Mr. Miller’s testimony was “based on
unreliable data” because it was imprecise and “reflected only estimates and educated
guesswork.” He focuses on the data and information that Mr. Miller did not have: he
did not collect certain physical evidence on the night of the crash, his field sketches
were not drawn to scale, he did not attempt to forensically map the scene (or create
any kind of accident reconstruction) until years later, and he admitted on the stand
that findings related to vehicle speed and angle were estimates and not precise
calculations. Mr. Faltz further contends that his expert, Dr. Russell, drew attention
to fatal flaws in Mr. Miller’s data that rendered Mr. Miller’s opinion inadmissibly
weak and speculative.
To start, we take issue with Mr. Faltz’s analytical focus—on what was
missing. Rule 702, as adopted by Motorola, requires only that the information used
by an expert be “sufficient.” Fed. R. Evid. 702(b); see 29 Wright & Miller’s Federal
Practice & Procedure § 6268 (2d ed. 2017) (explaining that “the word ‘sufficient’ in
Rule 702 signifies that the expert may properly base her opinion on something less
17
than all the pertinent facts or data”). It “does not demand that experts rely on all data
that could be deemed relevant,” and it likewise does not “require the expert to seek
out the best possible source of relevant information.” Lawes v. CSA Architects &
Eng’rs LLP, 963 F.3d 72, 101 (1st Cir. 2020); see also Smith v. BMW N. Am., Inc.,
308 F.3d 913, 920-21 (8th Cir. 2002) (reversing the exclusion of expert testimony
where the expert “based his estimate of the principal direction of force” in a car crash
“on all information he could obtain”).
We accordingly begin our analysis with the information on which Mr. Miller
did rely: a field sketch incorporating the measurements and observations he made
on the night of the crash; the rough calculations he made based on these
measurements; his conversations with the witnesses on the scene; a threedimensional physical reconstruction of how the two cars came together; his own
observations of the interior and exterior of the Ford, including the Ford’s airbag; and
his knowledge of principles of physics and the nature of airbag design. From this
data, Mr. Miller concluded that: (1) the front of the Ford struck the passenger side
of the Nissan, (2) the Ford’s airbag fully deployed before the Ford started to rotate,
(3) as a result, the driver’s “facial region . . . ma[de] contact with the airbag,” and
(4) it was “scientifically and physically impossible” for the driver to have “grazed
or missed” the airbag under these circumstances. Reduced to its essence, Mr.
18
Miller’s testimony was that the driver of the Ford hit the airbag more or less headon because the Ford hit the Nissan more or less head-on.
We conclude that the trial court was within its discretion in finding Mr.
Miller’s testimony to be reliable. Mr. Miller’s three-dimensional reconstruction of
the crash, where he fit the Ford and the Nissan together like the “pieces of a puzzle,”
combined with the documentation of the skid marks and gouge marks in the
roadway, formed a sufficient factual basis for his conclusion about how the Ford and
the Nissan came together. Cf. Clark v. Chrysler Corp., 310 F.3d 461, 470-72 (6th
Cir. 2002) (affirming the admission of expert’s crash reconstruction opinion that was
“based on his extensive background in automobile safety testing; his examination of
[the] truck, the accident scene, the police report, the photographs and the depositions
in the case; the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-industry in B-pillars; and general
acceptance in the automobile industry regarding B-pillar testing at the time the
[vehicle] was manufactured”), vacated on other grounds by Chrysler Corp. v. Clark,
540 U.S. 801 (2003); Salahuddin v. United States, 564 F. Supp. 3d 75, 85 (E.D.N.Y.
2021) (finding accident reconstruction testimony reliable in a bench trial where the
expert based his opinion on “trial testimony[,] . . . depositions[,] . . . two visits to the
accident site, an inspection of [one vehicle], photos taken of debris from the accident,
Google Earth images, the weights of the vehicles, the width of [one vehicle], and the
distance between the [vehicle’s] headlight and the ground”).
19
While Mr. Miller conceded that he was unable to conduct a full forensic
accident reconstruction, he explained that the data he did gather allowed him to
calculate a “range[ ]” of possible speeds and angles for the crash. Thus, we are
unable to say that he lacked sufficient facts or data as a matter of law. Cf. Thomson
v. Rook, 255 F. Supp. 2d 584, 587 (E.D. Tex. 2001) (admitting an expert’s testimony
despite his failure to “mention or discuss comprehensively all variables that may
have been at the scene of the collision” because he “ha[d] at least a colorable
explanation for assumptions made within a range for applicable variables”). Further,
Mr. Miller’s “knowledge of the basic operation of air bags”—the foundation for
which Mr. Faltz does not challenge—is a proper basis for his opinion about the
functioning of the airbag in this case, especially given his personal examination of
the Ford’s airbag. See Smith, 308 F.3d at 920 (reversing the district court’s exclusion
of a doctor’s testimony about “whether a properly deployed air bag would have
reduced or prevented [the plaintiff’s] injuries”).
Mr. Russell’s criticism of Mr. Miller’s calculations of the speed and angle of
the collision does not render Mr. Miller’s opinion inadmissible. “Experts frequently
disagree and their opinions, if reliable” can be admitted under Rule 702
notwithstanding such disagreement. Smith, 308 F.3d at 921 n.11; cf. Thorndike v.
DaimlerChrysler Corp., 266 F. Supp. 2d 172, 179-80 (D. Me. 2003) (admitting the
testimony of an expert about the movement of a spare tire during a car crash even
20
where “certain facts . . . might permit other assumptions to be drawn” and the
expert’s “calculations rel[ied] heavily on educated guesswork and theory”). We
emphasize that Mr. Miller’s testimony sought to address the following topic: how
the DNA evidence on the steering wheel came to be there. Although there is little
question that the precise angle and speed at which the collision occurred are relevant
to this inquiry, the legally significant issues in this case have to do with what the
forces of the crash did to the Ford’s driver and its other occupants—and not, for
example, whether the Ford exceeded the speed limit at the time of the crash.
Put another way, the “relevant reliability concerns” in this case, Kumho Tire
Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 150 (1999), concern the range of circumstances
under which the driver could have missed or grazed the airbag and whether the
information on which Mr. Miller relied could permissibly serve as the basis for his
conclusions on that score. While we do not mean to imply that Mr. Miller’s
calculations and the bases for them are an unimportant component of his testimony,
Mr. Russell’s and Mr. Faltz’s critiques of them go to weight, not admissibility. See
Motorola, 147 A.3d at 757 (“The goal is to deny admission to expert testimony that
is not reliable, but to admit competing theories if they are derived from reliable
principles that have been reliably applied. . . . [W]e expect that many cases will
feature expert witnesses espousing different views of the evidence. Their testimony
will be tested by the adversary process and evaluated by the jury.”); Miles v. Gen.
21
Motors Corp., 262 F.3d 720, 724 (8th Cir. 2001) (affirming the admission of
testimony about the cause of the plaintiff’s injuries and “conclud[ing] that [the
plaintiff’s] criticism of the experts’ testimony is the proper subject for a thorough
cross-examination and not the basis for the absolute exclusion of their testimony”);
Clay v. Ford Motor Co., 215 F.3d 663, 668-69 (6th Cir. 2000) (affirming the
admission of expert testimony where the defendant did not “challenge the principle
that dynamics can be used to analyze vehicle designs and predict their motion” and
where “[t]he district court, in its discretion, could have decided” the expert’s failure
to test his theories “went to the weight of his testimony”); Desrosiers v. Flight Int’l
of Fla., Inc., 156 F.3d 952, 961 (9th Cir. 1998) (affirming the admission of expert
accident reconstruction testimony where the expert used “circumstantial evidence”
such as a “review of maintenance records, wreckage, depositions, service manuals,
textbooks, and the radar tape” rather than the analysis of physical evidence to
reconstruct the crash); cf. Butts v. United States, 822 A.2d 407, 414-15 (D.C. 2003)
(explaining, under the Frye/Dyas standard, that although the conditions in the
experiment differed from those of the crash in a number of ways, those differences
were for the jury “to consider when assessing the weight of the evidence” and were
not grounds for exclusion of the testimony).
In addition to his primary argument attacking the sufficiency of Mr. Miller’s
facts and data under Rule 702(b), Mr. Faltz also asserts in passing that the trial court
22
erred by simply “listing” the methods and data that Mr. Miller used without further
analysis of why they were reliable or were reliably applied to the facts of this case.
We agree that the trial court’s discussion of Mr. Miller’s methodology and its
application to the facts of the case is sparse. But because we review for abuse of
discretion, we will affirm where “the trial court has ruled on each essential criterion”
in performing its gatekeeper role, so long as that ruling is supported by the record.
Willis, 353 A.3d at 882 (quoting Ibn-Tamas, 407 A.2d at 635). That is so here. Cf.
District of Columbia v. Facebook, Inc., 340 A.3d 1, 11 (D.C. 2025) (reversing the
exclusion of expert testimony where the trial court’s written order only referred to
the hearing transcript, and the hearing transcript revealed that the trial court “did not
engage in any meaningful Motorola analysis with respect to” parts of the expert
testimony). Further, while expert testimony can be excluded if there is too great of
an “analytical gap between the data and the opinion proffered,” Motorola, 147 A.3d
at 755 (quoting General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136, 146 (1997)), Mr. Faltz
does not explain why such a “gap” exists and would warrant reversal in this case.
Accordingly, we cannot say that the trial court improperly exercised its discretion in
admitting Mr. Miller’s testimony. See Lewis, 263 A.3d at 1059.
23
b. Mr. Chase’s Testimony
Mr. Faltz argues that Mr. Chase’s testimony was flawed in ways similar to
Mr. Miller’s testimony. First, he argues that if we conclude that Mr. Miller’s
testimony should not have been admitted, Mr. Chase’s testimony should not have
been admitted either because it analyzed and heavily relied on Mr. Miller’s findings.
Second, Mr. Faltz argues that the trial court’s Rule 702 analysis with respect to Mr.
Chase is perfunctory and thus legally deficient. Third, Mr. Faltz points to two ways
in which Mr. Chase appears to have misunderstood Mr. Miller’s expert report: (1) he
assumed that Mr. Miller created his accident reconstruction “immediately following
the crash” after “forensically mapp[ing] and document[ing]” “critical scene physical
evidence which dissipates over time” and (2) he understood Mr. Miller to have
concluded that the Ford moved forward in a straight line nearly seventeen feet before
it began its rotation. Mr. Faltz argues that these errors are enough to fatally
undermine the reliability of Mr. Chase’s testimony. The government argues that the
trial court permissibly found Mr. Chase’s testimony admissible because it found that
Mr. Miller’s report—on which Mr. Chase’s testimony was largely based—was
admissible. It urges that Mr. Chase’s purported misunderstandings about Mr.
Miller’s report are minor matters that do not render his entire opinion unreliable, and
that the trial court was within its discretion in admitting the testimony. The
government also argues that the trial court did enough to explain why it was
24
admitting Mr. Chase’s testimony by “stat[ing] precisely the principles and methods
Chase relied upon and the conclusions he drew from applying those principles to the
Miller data.”
We briefly recount Mr. Chase’s testimony. Mr. Chase relied on Mr. Miller’s
written report and in-court testimony about the likelihood that the Ford struck the
Nissan head-on to form his conclusions. He also relied on his own inspection of the
Ford’s airbag, along with his personal knowledge of airbag design, physics, and
federal automobile safety standards. He testified that where, as here, “a severe
frontal impact” initiates a crash, “the driver of a vehicle under those circumstances
cannot . . . miss the contact, the interface with the airbag” because that is what
federal airbag safety standards require the airbag to do. Mr. Chase admitted that in a
different scenario—if, for example, the Ford had been struck on the side, rather than
striking the Nissan head-on—it would be possible for the driver to miss the airbag
because the driver would be flung laterally at the moment the driver’s side airbag
inflated. On cross-examination, when confronted with inaccuracies in his written
report, Mr. Chase reaffirmed his conclusion that the Ford’s airbag “operate[d] as it
was designed to operate” under the circumstances of the crash.
It was within the trial court’s discretion to admit Mr. Chase’s testimony. First,
because we have concluded that the trial court did not err in admitting Mr. Miller’s
25
testimony, we reject Mr. Faltz’s argument that Mr. Chase’s testimony was
derivatively inadmissible because he relied on Mr. Miller’s testimony. See, e.g., Kim
v. Am. Honda Motor Co., 86 F.4th 150, 162 (5th Cir. 2023) (holding that “[t]he
district court did not abuse its discretion when it found [plaintiff’s second expert]
did more than ‘co-sign’” the claims of the plaintiff’s first expert). Second, while we
again have reservations about the brevity of the trial court’s analysis of some of Mr.
Chase’s testimony, we are not persuaded that this is reversible error, for the same
reasons we are unpersuaded by this argument as applied to Mr. Miller’s expert
testimony. Cf. Clay, 215 F.3d at 667 (affirming where, “[a]lthough the district court
did not explicitly recite that [the expert] testimony was relevant and reliable, its
rulings indicate that it made that determination”).
Finally, while Mr. Faltz is correct that Mr. Chase’s testimony relied in part on
a misunderstanding of several statements in Mr. Miller’s expert report, we are not
persuaded that these inaccuracies rendered his entire testimony unreliable. Mr.
Chase initially appeared to believe that Mr. Miller had conducted his analysis of the
crash site immediately after it took place and, therefore, that Mr. Miller may have
collected more evidence than he actually did. Mr. Chase reiterated the conclusions
he drew based on Mr. Miller’s field sketch and the physical evidence Mr. Miller did
collect and document at that time. Mr. Chase also may have misinterpreted one of
Mr. Miller’s statements regarding the movement of the Nissan during the crash:
26
although Mr. Miller concluded that the Nissan moved “laterally” about seventeen
feet and that the Ford moved in a diagonal line after the collision, Mr. Chase took
this analysis and appeared to assume that the Ford moved forward about seventeen
feet before beginning any rotational or diagonal movement at all. Mr. Chase
acknowledged that these assessments were “approximation[s].”
While an expert’s total misunderstanding of the information on which their
conclusion is based can be grounds for exclusion, see, e.g., Montgomery Cnty. v.
Microvote Corp., 320 F.3d 440, 448-49 (3d Cir. 2003) (affirming the exclusion of
expert testimony where the expert “could not identify the source or basis of some
of” the documents on which he relied), the imperfections in Mr. Chase’s testimony
do not rise to that level, see Hardeman v. Monsanto, 997 F.3d 941, 961-62 (9th Cir.
2021) (explaining that “[i]mperfect application of methodology may not render
expert testimony unreliable” where the inaccuracy flows from a “minor flaw”
(citation modified)), overruled in part on other grounds by Monsanto Co. v. Durnell,
146 S. Ct. 2001, 2010-11 (2026); Kieffer v. Weston Land, Inc., 90 F.3d 1496,
1499-1500 (10th Cir. 1996) (rejecting a challenge to the “factual basis” for an
expert’s testimony where the expert permissibly “theorized circumstances under
which” the plaintiff’s injury could have been caused based on the available
evidence). Like Mr. Miller, Mr. Chase relied on the field sketch, crash photographs,
the physics of automobile crashes, his inspection of the airbag, and his knowledge
27
of airbag design to conclude that in a crash with a “severe frontal impact” like this
one, “the driver of a vehicle under those circumstances . . . cannot miss the contact,
the interface with the airbag.” On this record, the errors in Mr. Chase’s testimony go
to the weight of that testimony, not its admissibility, see Govan v. Brown, 228 A.3d
142, 155 (D.C. 2020) (concluding that gaps or flaws in otherwise-sufficient data
considered by an expert are “relevant to the weight to afford the opinion, rather than
its admissibility”), so we see no improper exercise of discretion, see Lewis, 263 A.3d
at 1059.
B. Mr. Faltz’s Innocence Protection Act Petition
1. Legal Framework and Standard of Review
“In relevant part, the IPA provides that at any time, a person convicted of a
criminal offense in the Superior Court may move to vacate the conviction or to grant
a new trial on the grounds of actual innocence based on new evidence.” Caston v.
United States, 146 A.3d 1082, 1089 (D.C. 2016) (citation modified); see D.C. Code
§ 22-4135(a), (b). “The motion must ‘set forth specific, non-conclusory facts’ and
must identify the specific new evidence, establish how it demonstrates the movant’s
actual innocence, and establish why the evidence is ‘not cumulative or
impeaching.’” Caston, 146 A.3d at 1089 (quoting D.C. Code § 22-4135(c)(1)-(3)).
As relevant here, “new evidence” is evidence that “[w]as not personally known and
28
could not, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, have been personally known to
the movant at the time of the trial or the plea proceeding.” D.C. Code
§ 22-4131(7)(A). “‘Actual innocence’ or ‘actually innocent’ means that the person
did not commit the crime of which he or she was convicted.” Id. § 22-4131(1).
“In determining whether to grant relief, the court may consider any relevant
evidence, but shall consider the following: (A) The new evidence; (B) How the new
evidence demonstrates actual innocence; (C) Why the new evidence is or is not
cumulative or impeaching,” and, as relevant in this case, “(E) If the conviction
resulted from a guilty plea, the specific reason the movant pleaded guilty despite
being actually innocent of the crime.” Id. § 22-4135(g)(1). The movant must include
an affidavit with the motion stating, under penalty of perjury, that they are “actually
innocent of the crime that is the subject of the motion, and that the new evidence
was not deliberately withheld by the movant for purposes of strategic advantage.”
Id. § 22-4135(d)(1).
If, after considering these factors, “the court concludes that it is more likely
than not that the movant is actually innocent of the crime, the court shall grant a new
trial.” Id. § 22-4135(g)(2). And if the court “concludes by clear and convincing
evidence that the movant is actually innocent of the crime, the court shall vacate the
29
conviction and dismiss the relevant count with prejudice.” Id. § 22-4135(g)(3); see
Caston, 146 A.3d at 1089-90.
“We review the denial of a motion to vacate under the IPA for abuse of
discretion, giving great deference to the trial court’s role as the trier of fact on the
ultimate issue of actual innocence under the IPA.” Williams v. United States, 187
A.3d 559, 562 (D.C. 2018) (citation modified). “Thus, we apply the clearly
erroneous standard of review to the trial judge’s rejection of allegedly newly
discovered evidence offered to prove actual innocence.” Id. at 562-63 (citation
modified). “As such, the scope of our review is narrow on the question of whether
that new evidence establishes appellant’s actual innocence.” Id. at 563 (citation
modified).
Factual findings are “clearly erroneous when although there is evidence to
support [them], the reviewing court on the entire evidence is left with the definite
and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed,” Johnson v. United States,
232 A.3d 156, 167 (D.C. 2020) (quoting United States v. United States Gypsum Co.,
333 U.S. 364, 394-95 (1948)), or they reflect “a manifest misunderstanding of the
record evidence,” Ashrafi v. Fernandez, 193 A.3d 129, 133 (D.C. 2018). A trial court
also abuses its discretion where it “failed to undertake a required factual inquiry or
if it ignored an apparent deficiency in the record.” In re Penning, 930 A.2d 144, 153
30
(D.C. 2007) (quoting In re Orshansky, 804 A.2d 1077, 1092-93 (D.C. 2002)). But
“[w]here there are two permissible views of the evidence, the factfinder’s choice
between them cannot be clearly erroneous.” Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S.
564, 574 (1985). In Faltz I, we explained that “the trial court is obligated to consider
all of the factors outlined in the IPA,” and we remanded the case “for further analysis
of the totality of the evidence Mr. Faltz presented in his IPA claim.” 318 A.3d at
350.
2. Additional Background
The trial court credited Dr. Rudin’s testimony that Dorrell Ingram’s DNA was
likely present on the right side of the airbag. Nevertheless, the trial court explained,
the presence of both individuals’ DNA on the airbag did not show that Mr. Faltz was
more likely than not actually innocent. The court discussed Mr. Faltz’s expert,
Charles Russell, who opined that it was unlikely that the driver made contact with
the middle of the airbag because the impact of the crash caused the car to rotate to
its right, throwing the driver (and everyone else) immediately forward and to the left,
causing the driver to miss the airbag entirely or barely “skim[ ] off” it. The trial court
also recounted the testimony of the government’s experts, who concluded that the
car did not begin to rotate immediately upon impact and that, in any event, the driver
could not have missed the airbag because it was fully inflated 40 milliseconds after
31
the crash and was designed to “engulf[ ] the driver.” The trial court credited the
testimony of the government’s experts, and it observed that “the driver could not
miss the airbag and the driver’s DNA is located on the center of the airbag,” meaning
that Mr. Faltz was the driver. It reasoned that:
By design the airbag must inflate before impact, making it
unlikely that the driver would miss the airbag. Mr. Russell
acknowledged that it is possible that the driver made some
contact with the airbag. Mr. Miller and Mr. Chase testified
that it would be impossible for the driver to miss the
airbag. The Court is not convinced that the driver would
completely miss the airbag. Therefore, the new DNA
analysis fails to demonstrate that Defendant is actually
innocent.
In addition, the trial court did not find credible Mr. Faltz’s testimony about
why he pled guilty. It emphasized areas of uncertainty in Mr. Faltz’s testimony,
including his inability to articulate “exactly where he was sitting in the car, which
part of his body struck which part of the car, whether he made any contact with
Dorrell Ingram during impact, how he hurt his right hip[,] or whether he hit the
airbag at all.” It also emphasized Mr. Faltz’s letter to the court “taking responsibility
for the victims losing their lives,” and it pointed out that Mr. Faltz did not object to
being characterized as the driver of the car at the plea hearing or at sentencing. In
light of this, and in light of the “strong DNA evidence supporting that Defendant
was the driver”—consisting of the fact that “[a] large amount of Defendant’s DNA
32
was found on the center of the driver’s airbag, where the driver would have made
contact with the airbag during the impact”—the trial court found that Mr. Faltz’s
“statement to the Presentence Report interviewer does not outweigh the strong
evidence that Defendant was the driver of the vehicle.” The trial court’s analysis did
not include any discussion of the eyewitness testimony identifying Dorrell Ingram
as the driver of the Ford.
3. Discussion
Mr. Faltz argues that the trial court abused its discretion for several reasons.
First, he contends that even if the trial court permissibly admitted the expert
testimony of Mr. Miller and Mr. Chase, it should have accorded their testimony zero
weight because of flaws in their data, methods, and conclusions. Second, he argues
that the trial court erred by failing to even mention the eyewitness testimony
identifying Dorrell Ingram as the driver. Third, he argues that the trial court failed
to appropriately grapple with the reasons why he pled guilty in the first place, and
that the court unfairly twisted Mr. Faltz’s statement expressing remorse about his
involvement into an acknowledgment of his guilt as the driver. Based on these
alleged errors, Mr. Faltz asks us to hold that he has carried his burden to show that
he is actually innocent by clear and convincing evidence, or at least that he has
33
shown by a preponderance of the evidence that he is actually innocent. And if we
remand for a new trial, he asks that we reassign this case to a different judge.
The government argues that under our deferential standard of review, it was
not clear error for the trial court to credit the government’s experts over Mr. Faltz’s.
It further contends that because the trial court briefly mentioned the eyewitness
testimony, it implicitly considered it, and it did not abuse its discretion in declining
to credit it.
We conclude that the trial court improperly exercised its discretion, for a
second time, in denying Mr. Faltz’s IPA petition. The trial court made several
significant errors and oversights in its analysis: it failed to meaningfully address the
stipulated eyewitness testimony identifying Dorrell Ingram as the driver, to grapple
with the weaknesses in the government’s expert testimony, and to appropriately
evaluate Mr. Faltz’s testimony. In Faltz I, we remanded because the trial court did
not grapple with the “totality of the evidence,” including by failing to mention
certain exculpatory evidence. 318 A.3d at 350. The trial court made similar errors
here. And because these errors, “in combination, convince us that [the court] should
reconsider its ruling with those errors corrected,” we again vacate and remand.
Bryant v. United States, 341 A.3d 586, 588 (D.C. 2025).
34
As we focus on the totality of the evidence under consideration, we find it
helpful to begin with a broad-brush inventory of the key categories of evidence in
this case. First, there are the accounts of the witnesses to the crash. This includes the
stipulations regarding Officers Phifer and Hodges, who identified Dorrell Ingram as
the driver of the Ford just minutes after the crash. See Faltz I, 318 A.3d at 344. It
also includes Mr. Faltz’s testimony during the IPA hearing in which he provided his
account of the crash and also sought to explain why he pled guilty and why he made
certain decisions in his initial criminal case. Second, there is the expert testimony
about the DNA evidence itself: the testimony of Mr. Faltz’s expert, Dr. Norah Rudin,
who explained that the second DNA sample on the edge of the airbag likely
contained Dorrell Ingram’s DNA, and the testimony of the government’s expert, Dr.
Bruce Budowle, who criticized some of Dr. Rudin’s methodology and conclusions
but agreed that both Mr. Faltz and Dorrell Ingram were likely contributors to the
airbag-edge DNA sample. Third, there is the expert testimony about the crash itself,
as discussed in more detail above. Dr. Russell, Mr. Faltz’s expert, opined that the
driver could have skimmed or missed the airbag entirely because he was thrown
immediately to the left by the forces of the crash and that those same forces could
have flung DNA samples all over the inside of the vehicle. The government’s
experts, Mr. Miller and Mr. Chase, opined that because of the way the Ford and the
Nissan collided and the design characteristics of the Ford’s airbag, the driver must
35
have struck the center of the airbag and deposited DNA there, meaning the driver
must have been Mr. Faltz. 2
First and most importantly, it was error for the trial court to fail to address the
eyewitness testimony identifying Dorrell Ingram, and not Mr. Faltz, as the driver of
the Ford. While trial courts have substantial discretion in how they weigh and
evaluate new evidence of actual innocence, we have repeatedly explained that they
must view it in the context of all the evidence in the case. See Faltz I, 318 A.3d at
349-50; Caston, 146 A.3d at 1094 (“We agree that it is not proper for a court
evaluating a claim of actual innocence to evaluate each piece of evidence in
isolation” and to require each piece to independently prove actual innocence.). And
“if [the eyewitness evidence] is believed, [Mr. Faltz] is innocent.” Stringer v. United
States (Stringer I), 301 A.3d 1218, 1229 (D.C. 2023). Therefore, “why the trial court
did not believe” this evidence “is critical to our review,” id., especially because, on
its face, the presence of Dorrell Ingram’s DNA on the driver’s side airbag
corroborates the eyewitness accounts placing him as the driver. But because the trial
court did not mention the eyewitness testimony in its actual innocence analysis, we
remain in the dark on the court’s reasoning. As a result, the trial court’s apparent
2
These experts appeared to proceed on the assumption that the occupants of the Ford were “unrestrained,” i.e., not wearing seatbelts. Neither party takes issue with this premise, so we do not either.
36
choice “to altogether ignore” the single most important piece of exculpatory
evidence in this case is clearly erroneous. Ashrafi, 193 A.3d at 132. This error
compounds the ones that follow, as we explain below.
Second, while we do not suggest that the trial court must take any particular
view of the expert testimony in this case, we have “significant reservations about the
trial court’s bases” for crediting the government’s experts while declining to credit
Mr. Faltz’s. Stringer v. United States (Stringer II), 355 A.3d 683, 692 (D.C. 2026).3
To start, Mr. Russell opined that Mr. Miller’s reconstruction failed to take into
account the possibility, raised by eyewitness testimony, that the Ford turned or
swerved to the right just before the crash. This is a potentially important point—
which the trial court failed to consider when weighing the expert testimony—
because both Mr. Russell and Mr. Chase agreed that the angle at which the Ford
struck the Nissan could have affected how quickly the Ford started to rotate, which,
in turn, could have affected whether the occupants (including the driver) were flung
3
We emphasize that our conclusion above—that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting Mr. Miller’s and Mr. Chase’s expert testimony—does not compel the conclusion that the trial court properly credited that testimony. “[A] determination that proffered expert testimony is reliable does not indicate, in any way, the correctness or truthfulness of such an opinion.” In re Scrap Metal Antitrust Litig., 527 F.3d 517, 529 (6th Cir. 2008). So, while we affirm the trial court’s reliability determination, the “credibility and accuracy” of the expert testimony is a distinct question implicating the trial court’s duty as a factfinder under the IPA, in contrast to its duty as a gatekeeper under Rule 702 and Motorola. Id.
37
immediately to the left so as to miss or skim the airbags when they deployed. In
addition, the trial court failed to consider whether the apparent lack of DNA evidence
on the passenger side airbag could affect the credibility of Mr. Miller’s and Mr.
Chase’s testimony. Because Darryl Ingram sat in the passenger seat when the crash
occurred (or at least someone almost certainly did), the absence of DNA on the
passenger side airbag is, at the very least, consistent with Mr. Russell’s view that the
forces of the crash threw the Ford’s occupants diagonally and to the left, causing
them to miss the airbags as they deployed. Neither Mr. Miller nor Mr. Chase
explained how it could be simultaneously true that the driver hit the airbag dead
center but no DNA evidence was recovered from the passenger side airbag.
Relatedly, the trial court did not address Mr. Miller’s admission during the
IPA hearing that his calculations—including about the speeds involved in the
collision and the angle at which the collision occurred—were all “estimates” because
his field sketch lacked the precise measurements necessary to perform precise
calculations. Indeed, Mr. Russell criticized those calculations, and the conclusions
that Mr. Miller drew from them, in precisely those terms. And while the trial court
was not required to credit Mr. Russell’s view of Mr. Miller’s calculations in this
case, it did not “adequately explain” this “critical aspect[ ]” of its decision: why it
credited Mr. Miller’s conclusions regarding the movement of the Ford’s occupants
during the crash in light of the weaknesses in the underlying data that Mr. Miller
38
himself acknowledged. See In re Robinson, 216 A.3d 887, 890 (D.C. 2019)
(reversing the trial court’s fee determination where the court did not explain why
nonlegal services should be compensated at a lower hourly rate than legal services,
which was a key premise underlying the trial court’s ultimate fee determination).
Instead, the trial court wrote that “[t]he purpose of an airbag is to protect the
driver. By design the airbag must inflate before impact, making it unlikely that the
driver would miss the airbag.” But Mr. Russell offered an explanation for why a
driver or passenger might miss the airbag—the rotation of the vehicle flinging them
to the left of the airbag rather than forward—and provided examples of crashes in
which this happened. Further, as Mr. Russell testified—without apparent dispute by
the government’s experts—potential sources of DNA can be scattered throughout a
vehicle by the forces of a crash. By relying on the “purpose” of an airbag in general
to discredit the specific explanations and evidence identified by Mr. Russell, it
appears to us that the trial court “neglect[ed] to address relevant factors and provide
substantial reasoning” for this conclusion. Carome v. Carome, 262 A.3d 242, 250
n.4 (D.C. 2021) (finding that the trial court abused its discretion where it “did not
mention” important evidence in the record (citation modified)).
To put these oversights in broader context, it bears noting that the trial court
was not required as a matter of law to credit, or find persuasive, any of the expert
39
testimony in this case. See A.C. v. N.W., 160 A.3d 509, 518-19 (D.C. 2017)
(explaining that the trial court was not required to credit the testimony of the sole
expert in the case merely because no rebuttal expert testimony was offered). We
point this out because the trial court’s order appears to operate under the incorrect
assumption that it could resolve Mr. Faltz’s IPA petition only by either crediting Mr.
Russell and finding that Mr. Faltz carried his actual innocence burden or crediting
Mr. Miller and Mr. Chase and rejecting the IPA petition. While we do not suggest
that the trial court was required to instead credit the stipulated eyewitness testimony
of Officers Phifer and Hodges, the court’s findings do not meaningfully address how
the relative strength or weakness of the expert testimony interacts with evidence that,
if believed, would exonerate Mr. Faltz. That is, by zeroing in on the accident
reconstruction expert dispute to the exclusion of all else, the trial court does not
appear to have taken the necessary step back to ask how the expert testimony fit into
the “totality of the evidence,” including the uncontradicted eyewitness account
placing Dorrell Ingram as the driver of the Ford. See Faltz I, 318 A.3d at 650.
Finally, we are skeptical of some of the trial court’s stated reasons for
disregarding Mr. Faltz’s testimony.4 To start, the trial court did not base its
4
Mr. Faltz argues, for the first time in his reply brief, that the trial court erred in addressing his reasons for pleading guilty under D.C. Code § 22-4135(g)(1)(E). We typically do not address arguments made for the first time in a reply brief, so we
40
conclusions about Mr. Faltz’s testimony on its observations of Mr. Faltz’s demeanor
while testifying, so we are not at a disadvantage in assessing those conclusions
ourselves. See Stringer I, 301 A.3d at 1228 (explaining that “we might be more likely
to find clear error” in this context “based on our own comparison between the
witness’s version of events and the objective facts and our assessment of the
significance of any inconsistencies”). The trial court instead focused on perceived
internal inconsistencies or weaknesses in Mr. Faltz’s testimony: that (1) Mr. Faltz
“claims that he was not the driver but does not know where he was sitting at the time
of the accident”; (2) Mr. Faltz “does not remember whether he hit the airbag at all,
yet his DNA was found in the center and right edge of the airbag”; (3) Mr. Faltz
“does not remember whether he hit anyone or anything, but” still “sustained a serious
injury to his hip as a result of the crash”; and (4) Mr. Faltz “made no objection to
him being the driver of the car during the Rule 11 Plea Colloquy or at sentencing
and sent a letter to the court taking responsibility for the victims losing their lives.”
The trial court also emphasized the “strong DNA evidence” supporting the
conclusion that Mr. Faltz was the driver and concluded that Mr. Faltz’s statement to
do not examine, as a separate ground for reversal, Mr. Faltz’s argument that the trial court improperly applied this statutory provision of the IPA. See 4022 Georgia Ave., LLC v. D.C. Dep’t of Bldgs., 339 A.3d 121, 130 (D.C. 2025). But Mr. Faltz’s argument in his reply brief responded, in part, to arguments made by the government in its opposition brief about the trial court’s treatment of Mr. Faltz’s testimony, and Mr. Faltz generally argues that the trial court failed to properly evaluate all the evidence in the case. So, we consider how Mr. Faltz’s testimony fits into that totality.
41
the PSR interviewer that he was not the driver “does not outweigh the strong
evidence that [he] was the driver of the vehicle.”
All of these assessments suffer from flaws. First, Mr. Faltz did not testify that
he did not know where he was sitting during the incident; to the contrary, he testified
that he was sitting “in the back seat,” although he said that he did not remember the
“exact position” in the back seat and that he might have been “behind the driver or
sitting in the middle.” Second, while Mr. Faltz did testify that he “didn’t know” if
he hit the airbag or not, we do not see why that testimony undermines Mr. Faltz’s
account, which is that he was sitting in the back seat and was flung forward by the
crash. Similarly, the trial court’s third conclusion does not appear to undermine Mr.
Faltz’s account: it is again not apparent to us why Mr. Faltz’s hazy memory about
how he injured his hip would cut one way or the other in evaluating the credibility
of his testimony about whether or not he was driving, and the trial court did not
explain why this fact might have evidentiary value. In general, given the fast and
violent nature of this collision, it is not clear to us why it is significant that a
passenger in that collision would not remember precisely what objects in the car he
hit and the precise ways he incurred the injuries he suffered.
Finally, the trial court did not consider Mr. Faltz’s argument—a plausible one
given the record of the plea hearing—that he did not deny being the driver when he
42
pled guilty because nothing at the plea colloquy, including the government’s proffer
of facts, indicated to him that he was pleading guilty to being the driver. Likewise,
the court did not address Mr. Faltz’s explanation for why he did not deny being the
driver at sentencing. More generally, as we discuss further below, the trial court’s
comments suggesting that Mr. Faltz could not be actually innocent if he pled guilty
to the crime cannot be squared with the IPA. The statute expressly contemplates
motions by defendants who pled guilty, as long as they, among other things, identify
new evidence and provide a “specific reason” they pled guilty “despite being
actually innocent of the crime,” D.C. Code § 22-4135(c)(1), (g)(1)(E), which Mr.
Faltz did. Because an IPA movant who pled guilty will by definition have admitted
to the elements of the offense, a guilty plea cannot by itself (that is, without
consideration of the new evidence and the reasons the movant has provided for
having pled guilty) support a conclusion that the movant has failed to carry his
burden to show his actual innocence.
It was error for the trial court to rely on these considerations in discrediting
Mr. Faltz’s testimony, at least not without a more thorough explanation of why they
mattered. Caston, 146 A.3d at 1095-96 (explaining that “minor inconsistencies and
omissions will not support an adverse credibility determination” especially where at
least some of the inconsistencies “reflect[ ] the court’s own loose paraphrasing” of
the witness’s testimony). This is not to say that the trial court was required to accept
43
Mr. Faltz’s account. But the court appears to have ignored or misinterpreted aspects
of Mr. Faltz’s testimony in ways that cross the line from a permissible interpretation
of the facts to a “misunderstanding” of the record. Ashrafi, 193 A.3d at 133.
Nevertheless, we reject Mr. Faltz’s argument that the trial court had no choice
but to find that he had established his actual innocence by a preponderance of the
evidence. Although we perceive weaknesses in the government’s expert testimony,
we decline to hold that the trial court was required to credit Mr. Faltz’s expert
testimony as a matter of law. Similarly, while we conclude that the trial court erred
in failing to address the eyewitness testimony and analyzing Mr. Faltz’s testimony,
it does not follow that the court was required to accept the eyewitness accounts
wholesale. Instead, after a proper evaluation of all the evidence in this case, it will
be up to the trial court to choose between what may turn out be “two permissible
views of the evidence” regarding who drove the Ford when it collided with the
Nissan, Lynch v. Ghaida, 319 A.3d 1008, 1014 (D.C. 2024) (quoting Anderson, 470
U.S. at 574), and to sufficiently explain that choice.
C. Reassignment on Remand
Mr. Faltz requested in his briefing that his case be reassigned to a different
Superior Court judge on remand, an issue which the parties discussed in greater
detail during oral argument. Mr. Faltz argued that the trial court is, or appears to be,
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biased against him because of the errors that we have identified. At oral argument,
he also suggested that the trial court’s lengthy delay in addressing some of his
motions and its skepticism of the probity of his explanation for pleading guilty
justify reassignment. We agree that the case should be reassigned.
We have occasionally exercised our “supervisory authority” to reassign a case
on remand where doing so is necessary to preserve “the appearance of justice, as
well as its reality.” Bradley v. District of Columbia, 107 A.3d 586, 602 (D.C. 2015)
(quoting Thorne v. United States, 46 A.3d 1085, 1093 (D.C. 2012)). We consider
three factors when determining whether to reassign a case: “(1) whether the original
judge would reasonably be expected upon remand to have substantial difficulty in
discarding their previously expressed views or findings determined to be erroneous,
(2) whether reassignment is advisable to preserve the appearance of justice, and
(3) whether reassignment would be disproportionally wasteful and redundant
compared to the benefit in preserving the appearance of fairness.” Davis v. United
States, -- A.3d --, No. 24-CF-0554, 2026 WL 2342440, at *18 (D.C. Aug. 13, 2026).
Most often, we have ordered reassignment where a judge has expressed “personal
bias or prejudice” or has improperly “based his decision . . . on personal knowledge
or observations,” or where the judge’s conduct creates the appearance of such bias.
Mayers v. Mayers, 908 A.2d 1182, 1193 (D.C. 2006).
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Two factors, taken together, drive our decision to order the reassignment of
this case on remand. First, and most importantly, during the 2022 IPA hearing, the
trial court questioned whether it is ever possible for an innocent person to plead
guilty, notwithstanding the fact that the provisions of the IPA expressly contemplate
this circumstance. See D.C. Code § 22-4135(a), (g)(1)(E), (g)(4) (providing that “a
person convicted of a criminal offense” may file an actual innocence petition,
including where “the conviction resulted from a guilty plea”). During argument on
Mr. Faltz’s IPA motion, the trial court asked, apparently rhetorically, “Why would
you plead guilty to having [been] someone who killed two people . . . when you
knew you weren’t the driver?” A few minutes later, the trial court went further: “I’m
just trying to understand, you know, if somebody is telling you to plead guilty to
something that you didn’t do, especially of this nature, and, you know, you can call
it whatever you want, you can call it shoplifting, and why would you plead guilty if
you didn’t steal the bubble gum?”
We are concerned both that the court failed to grapple with the explanations
that Mr. Faltz provided for pleading guilty and that the court went beyond the
specifics of Mr. Faltz’s case in making broad assertions about defendants who plead
guilty. With its skepticism that a defendant would plead guilty to a crime if they
were innocent and its reference to a hypothetical crime, the trial court undermined
the IPA’s recognition that a defendant might have “pleaded guilty despite being
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actually innocent of the crime.” D.C. Code § 22-4135(g)(1)(E). Regardless of
whether this view actually contributed to the trial court’s evaluation of Mr. Faltz’s
IPA petition, the court’s statements at least “leave[ ] ‘lingering concerns that might
affect [Mr. Faltz’s] and the public’s perception of the proceedings on remand’”
because they suggest that the court might have difficulty evaluating an actual
innocence petition brought by any person who pled guilty—including Mr. Faltz.
Davis, 2026 WL 2342440, at *19 (quoting In re D.E., 991 A.2d 1205, 1214 (D.C.
2010)); see D.C. Code § 22-4135(g)(1)(E), (g)(4); cf. Mejia v. United States, 916
A.2d 900, 903 (D.C. 2007) (holding that recusal may be required where comments
suggest “an appearance of bias to an informed, objective observer”).
Second, especially in light of the trial judge’s comments about guilty pleas,
“an informed, objective observer” would also wonder whether Mr. Faltz can receive
a fair hearing from a judge who has made the same significant analytical errors twice.
Mejia, 916 A.2d at 903. As we have explained above, the trial court erred by failing
to consider the eyewitness accounts of Officers Phifer and Hodges, which, if
believed, would exonerate Mr. Faltz. In Faltz I, we likewise identified the trial
court’s failure to “contend with the fact that all of the eyewitness MPD officers
identified Dorrell Ingram, and not Mr. Faltz, as the driver of the Crown Victoria at
the time of the collision.” 318 A.3d at 350. We have also explained above that the
trial court erred in its evaluation of Mr. Faltz’s own testimony because the court
47
appeared to misunderstand some of his statements and placed undue weight on minor
discrepancies in his account of what happened. In Faltz I, similarly, we criticized the
trial court for taking some of Mr. Faltz’s comments out of “context” and for failing
to consider alternate explanations for others. See id.
We do not suggest that a case should be reassigned every time a trial judge is
reversed twice on the same issues. Cf. Stringer II, 355 A.3d at 699 (reversing the
trial court’s decision to deny IPA relief for the second time while not reassigning the
case to a different trial judge). But in this case, the trial judge’s comments regarding
guilty pleas and its repetition of errors in two consecutive evaluations of the same
IPA petition, taken together, counsel in favor of reassignment in order to ensure the
“appearance of justice” and eliminate the risk that the trial judge will “have
substantial difficulty in discarding [the] previously expressed views [and] findings
determined to be erroneous.” Davis, 2026 WL 2342440, at *18 (citation modified).
Transferring Mr. Faltz’s case to a new judge also will not be
“disproportionally wasteful and redundant compared to the benefit in preserving the
appearance of fairness.” Id. Reassignment would not require any new evidentiary
proceedings because, as we explained above, the trial court did not abuse its
discretion in admitting the government’s expert testimony. As a result, the new judge
could, if they wish, issue a new ruling on Mr. Faltz’s IPA petition that properly
48
considers the “totality of the evidence” after reviewing the transcripts, expert reports,
and exhibits in the existing record. Faltz I, 318 A.3d at 350. In light of the concerns
we have identified, therefore, we think that reassignment is both an appropriate use
of judicial resources and necessary to preserve “the appearance of justice, as well as
its reality.” Bradley, 107 A.3d at 602.
III. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the trial court was within its
discretion in admitting the testimony of the government’s two experts. We conclude,
however, that the trial court improperly exercised its discretion in denying Mr.
Faltz’s IPA petition. Therefore, we vacate the judgment of the trial court and remand
for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Exercising our supervisory
authority, we direct that this case be reassigned to a different judge on remand.
So ordered.