Witness · Florida Department of Law Enforcement

Thomas Balboni

Fingerprint examiner and investigator with the State Attorney's Office, Second Judicial Circuit, who testified as an expert in the 2019 Garcia–Magbanua trial.

Appeared Garcia–Magbanua

Mentioned Magbanua Retrial

56 lines · 4 appearances · 2 mentions · 2 trials

About

Balboni supplies the forensic link between Sigfredo Garcia and a 2013 pawnbroker transaction form, and his testimony also defines what was not examined — no prints belonging to Katherine Magbanua were ever submitted for comparison. Balboni testified that his own assignment did not include visiting or contacting the pawnbroker, seeking surveillance video, or checking for Rivera-associated forms. Together with his presence at the river firearm search, his account documents both the scope and the boundaries of the fingerprint and evidence-recovery work in the case record.

Across Trials

Balboni's presence in the record shifts substantially between the two proceedings. In the 2019 Garcia–Magbanua trial he was a testifying expert whose examination spanned direct, two separate cross-examinations, and juror questions, and whose thumbprint identification tied Garcia to a specific pawn transaction. In the 2022 Magbanua retrial he does not appear as a witness at all; his name surfaces in a single passing reference identifying him as the analyst present alongside Jason Newlin and Sparkman at the Osceola River gun recovery site. The delta is one of role rather than credibility — nothing in the later proceeding revisited or contested his fingerprint conclusions, and the retrial reference points to the evidence-recovery side of his work rather than to his laboratory comparison.

Trial Record (6)

GM Garcia–Magbanua Sep 26, 2019 – Oct 11, 2019

Trial Summary

Testified on the third trial day as a State Attorney's Office Criminal Investigation Unit investigator qualified as a fingerprint expert, matching a thumbprint on a 2013 pawnbroker transaction form to Sigfredo Garcia.