Ellerbe v. State

Summary

The Court affirmed the denial of Ellerbe's first postconviction motion, concluding that counsel was not ineffective for declining to impeach the State's forensic chemist with evidence of an unrelated disciplinary sanction. The Court also found no plain error in the claim that counsel failed to challenge the chemist's use of hypergeometric sampling because counsel did question the method and the chemist established that it was reliably used in the field. No separate opinions were filed.