On the night of April 10, 1991, 23-year-old Sheldean Simon was shot to death in front of his house on Kossuth Street in southwest Baltimore, Maryland.
Simon’s friend, Cherome Hines, told detectives with the Baltimore Police Department that four days earlier, she and Simon were at her house when a “greenish, grayish” Toyota 4Runner circled the block three times, slowing down each time it passed her house. Three hours later, she said, someone fired shots into her bedroom and her sister’s car.
About 45 minutes before the homicide, a man named Anthony Payne was wounded during a shooting at a house about a mile away. Three days later, Payne was shot to death.
The police believed the four shootings were related, tied to a feud between rival drug dealers.
A detective would later testify that a “gun fight” had taken place during Simon’s death. Police technicians collected seven bullets and 66 cartridge casings at the scene, including the bullet to the head that killed Simon.
Police also recovered firearm evidence from the shooting at Hines’s house and from the initial shooting involving Payne.
On April 16, 1991, police stopped 23-year-old Ronnie Hunt Jr., and his cousin, 19-year-old Harry Johnson III, in a Green 4Runner. The car was registered to Hunt’s aunt. During the stop, police recovered a Glock 40 pistol near Johnson. Police arrested Johnson but let Hunt go before arresting him the next day. Both men were charged with first-degree murder and use of a handgun in committing a crime of violence.
Officers searched Hunt’s residence on April 22. They found dealership records regarding the 4Runner, an instruction manual and box for a Glock, a 9 mm magazine for a Taurus pistol, and medical records related to Hunt’s treatment for a gunshot wound on April 10.
Hunt and Johnson were tried together in Baltimore City Circuit Court in September 1991. There were no eyewitnesses to Simon’s death; the state built its case by tying the men to the Glock and tying the Glock to the murder.
Hines testified about the shooting at her house when Simon was present and seeing the 4Runner circling her block. A man named Corey Johnson testified that Hunt expressed interest in speaking with Simon three times in the weeks before the murder.
John Kennedy testified that he bought several guns, including a Glock 40, in October 1990 for a friend named Kelly. Kennedy said he met Kelly and Hunt at a shooting range in December 1990 and that Hunt was carrying a Glock and two other weapons.
Kennedy testified pursuant to a plea agreement where he received a suspended sentence and probation for his then-pending charge for possession with the intent to distribute cocaine. During cross-examination, Kennedy said he could not say that the Glock he saw with Hunt at the shooting range was the same weapon Kennedy had obtained for Kelly.
Detective Harry Edgerton testified about the investigation. He said he interviewed Johnson and Hunt after their arrests. He said Johnson told him he found the Glock in a box that had been thrown out of the window of a black Chevy Nova on April 10. (Simon bought such a vehicle the day before his death.) Hunt said he had been shot during an attempted armed robbery on that same day.
Edgerton also testified about the forensic evidence collected from Hines’s house and the two shootings on April 10. He said he submitted this evidence for comparison analysis to Joseph Kopera, a firearms examiner with the Maryland State Police, who testified as an expert witness.
Prior to joining the state police, Kopera had spent 21 years as a firearms examiner with the Baltimore Police Department and was a fixture at trials across the Mid-Atlantic. He testified that he examined between 1,400 and 1,600 cases a year and had testified in federal court and in state courts in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. He said he held a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Maryland and an engineering degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.
Kopera testified that Simon was killed by a bullet fired from the Glock 40 found in the 4Runner. He also said that based on his examination of the firearm evidence collected at the crime scenes, two 9 mm weapons—including a Taurus pistol—were used at the Simon shooting. Kopera also testified that these three weapons were used at the Hines shooting and that the Taurus was used at the Payne shooting on August 10. The police never found the 9 mm weapons. The Glock 40 uses 10 mm ammunition.
The attorneys for Hunt and Johnson sought to question Kopera about any comparison analysis he did of the firearm evidence found at Payne’s homicide. Judge Elsbeth Bothe initially ordered the state to provide this evidence but then reversed course, describing any connection between the two homicides as “pretty peripheral.”
The state also introduced the evidence obtained during the search of Hunt’s residence, which included the Glock manual and a 9 mm Taurus pistol magazine found in a utility room. Police found the Glock box in another resident’s bedroom.
Hunt did not testify. A man named Deon Lester testified that Hunt never asked him about Simon’s whereabouts and that he knew of no dispute between the two men.
In his closing argument, Hunt’s attorney didn’t dispute the Glock’s connection to Simon’s murder, but he said no evidence directly tied Hunt to the weapon. His fingerprints weren’t on it, and the police had let him go on the day they arrested Johnson. In addition, he said the state had overlooked other suspects for Simon’s death, including Payne and his associates.
On September 25, 1991, the jury convicted both men of first-degree murder and use of a handgun in committing a crime of violence. Hunt received a sentence of life in prison on the murder conviction and a 20-year sentence to run consecutively on the weapons conviction. Johnson received a life sentence, but Judge Bothe suspended all but 15 years. At the sentencing hearing, Johnson’s attorney and the state both said that Johnson was a “follower” of his cousin.
Hunt appealed, and the Maryland Court of Special Appeals affirmed his conviction in 1993. He then filed a petition for post-conviction relief, which a judge in Baltimore City Circuit Court denied in 1997.
In early 2007, a public defender in Maryland representing James Kulbicki discovered inconsistencies in Kopera’s testimony about his resume. The attorney dug further and found out that Kopera had lied about his credentials. He had only attended college for a year and forged a transcript from the University of Maryland. After being confronted with this evidence, Kopera retired from the state police and then shot himself to death on March 1, 2007.
Nearly four years later, on January 31, 2011, Hunt filed a pro se petition for a writ of actual innocence. He said his constitutional rights to due process had been violated by the presentation of false evidence.
In an amended petition, Hunt said that Kopera’s testimony connecting the weapon found in the traffic stop to Simon’s murder was the linchpin in the state’s case,
“Every factual finding made by the jury hinged upon a determination that Kopera testified credibly,” the petition said. “If Kopera’s fake credentials and/or false testimony had been known, however, it is reasonably probable that the outcome of the trial would have been different, because his testimony probably would not have been as credible.”
A circuit court judge denied Hunt’s petition without a hearing in 2011. Hunt appealed, and the Court of Special Appeals reversed the decision and ordered a hearing, which took place in 2017. The Maryland Office of the Public Defender now represented Hunt.
In 2018, a circuit court judge again denied Hunt’s petition, ruling that Kopera’s false testimony about his credentials did not meet the definition of newly discovered evidence, because Hunt’s attorney could have found this evidence with reasonable diligence. The court noted the ease in which Kulbick’s attorney uncovered Kopera’s deception in 2007.
The court wrote: “Did these actions require some Herculean effort? No … All that was required in the case was a fax request and a fax reply to uncover Kopera’s fraud.”
Hunt appealed again, and the Court of Special Appeals affirmed the circuit-court ruling on November 26, 2019.
Hunt appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. His attorneys argued that the lower courts had erred in their decisions. The fact that an attorney in 2007 uncovered Kopera’s false credentials didn’t mean that another attorney could have or should have done it earlier, the attorneys argued. The appeal also noted that the state itself had failed to confirm Kopera’s credentials.
On June 7, 2021, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed the lower appellate court and returned Hunt’s writ petition to the circuit court. The Court of Appeals ruling said the previous denials of the writ petition had erred by unfairly placing the burden on Hunt’s attorneys for uncovering Kopera’s deceit.
“The circuit court, and the state in its brief, emphasize that the evidence of Kopera’s fraud could have been discovered at the time of Hunt’s trial,” the ruling said. “Although that proposition may be attractive in a more perfect world, we think it reflects a cramped and unrealistic notion, under the circumstances of the Kopera cases, of the reasonableness and good faith envisioned in the due diligence standard. Simply put, Kopera was, prior to the unearthing of his fraud, regarded widely as a trained and knowledgeable expert in ballistics who had been accepted to testify in courts throughout Maryland and several neighboring jurisdictions for decades before 2007. It appears that no cause was given, nor did it occur reasonably to any defense counsel until 2007 to question his credentials.”
On February 17, 2022, Judge Charles Peters of Baltimore City Circuit Court granted Hunt’s petition for a writ of actual innocence and ordered a new trial. He then granted the state’s motion to dismiss the charges. Hunt was released from prison that day.
Kopera’s misconduct also led to the exoneration of Douglass Haynie in 2025.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 07-07-2025
Last Update Date: 07-07-2025
