Lack Of Damage To CE-399

[Andrew Mason]

Sturdivan is all over the map. The SBT rib strike would be oblique to the bone (ie: more of the bone's mass was in the missile path) whereas your theory would have the bullet strike the rib bone perpendicular (ie: very little bone in the missile path).

That is your take.  The bullet would have struck JBC's rib somewhat obliquely and bent the rib inward before penetrating the bone. After all, it caused a fracture of the 5th rib near the spine and pentetrated the last 10 cm of rib.

So, better to believe your cockamamie theory that a bullet (unimpeded and nose-on) made a right-angle turn (3D will show this, plus it would have to traverse the shoulder cuff to reach the fifth rib at all) off the thin weak fifth rib bone.

There is no right angle turn.   The cockamamie theory is the one that has the intact barely damaged bullet CE399 deflecting around the point of contact on the radius (instead of deflecting away from it), making a significant jagged tear in the cuff drawing threads into the wrist wound and then making a tiny, almost unnoticed, slit in the wrist on exit.

You expecting a punched-out clean silhouette of the bullet shape? Unlike the back, the wrist is going to move quite a bit when struck and the bullet would deflect. Not a simple matter of a bullet going through a stiff supported surface and leaving clean holes.

You do realize that the wrist cannot possibly move while the bullet is in contact with it. The time is too short.  It is in contact with the wrist for a fraction of a millisecond. 

[Walt Cakebread]

That is your take.  The bullet would have struck JBC's rib somewhat obliquely and bent the rib inward before penetrating the bone. After all, it caused a fracture of the 5th rib near the spine and pentetrated the last 10 cm of rib.
There is no right angle turn.   The cockamamie theory is the one that has the bullet deflecting around the radius making a significant jagged tear in the cuff drawing threads into the wrist wound and then making a tiny, almost unnoticed slit in the wrist on exit.
You do realize that the wrist cannot possibly move while the bullet is in contact with it. The time is too short.  It is in contact with the wrist for a fraction of a millisecond.

This damage does not appear to have been created by a single pristine FMJ bullet ( CE 399)

The ragged hole is what you might expect from a bullet that had hit a hard bone and shattered into several pieces......

[Bill Chapman]

A 'juror'..a 'researcher'......   

Juror in the court of public opinion

Research: a careful, diligent search

[John Iacoletti]

I would have to check the US authorities but the Supreme Court of Canada has stated this on many occasions, the leading case is The Queen v. Morin [1988] 2 SCR 345.  The court stated the point this way (p. 362):

"The jury should be told that the facts are not to be examined separately and in isolation with reference to the criminal standard. This instruction is a necessary corollary to the basic rule referred to above. Without it there is some danger that a jury might conclude that the requirement that each issue or element of the offence be proved beyond a reasonable doubt demands that individual items of evidence be so proved."
It is very simple, common sense.  One can reach a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt about a fact based on many independent pieces of evidence that point to guilt but do not individually prove guilt.

For example, suppose the issue is identity of the killer and 16 witnesses independently describe 8 different things about the identity of the person who committed the crime (he wore a baseball cap, he had a beard, he had a bleeding cut on his left hand, he spoke with a french accent, he had blonde medium length hair, he wore blue running shoes, he had a blue denim jacket and he drove away in a red pickup truck with a damaged right tail-light). None of the witnesses were 100% sure that they made correct observations.  Now it so happens that a man fitting that description was stopped about a mile from the scene of the crime within a two minutes of the crime being committed, driving a red pickup truck with a damaged right tail-light.   It also turns out that the accused had been captured on video in a bar drinking with the deceased earlier in the evening.

Each one of those pieces of evidence cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by itself nor can a single piece of evidence prove the identity of the accused as the killer beyond a reasonable doubt. But together they form the basis on which a jury could conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the accused was the killer.

In your example, there is no reasonable doubt that the accused was "driving a red pickup truck with a damaged right tail-light", right?  And there's no reasonable doubt that a video exists of him drinking with the deceased earlier in the evening, right (although I'm not sure how that's relevant unless he claimed to not know the victim at all, or he had an alibi that was contradicted by the video)?

If there is reasonable doubt of these things, then it's a whole different conversation.

Instead, let's say for example that the cops claimed he was arrested "driving a red pickup truck with a damaged right tail-light", but they lost the truck, or they produce a photo of the truck but it doesn't have a broken tail-light.  Or there are witnesses to the arrest who say he was arrested in a blue car...

[John Iacoletti]

Yes. If there is enough independent evidence for the trier of fact to be satisfied that it could not reasonably fit together, as it does, without the ultimate conclusion advanced by the prosecution being correct, then the prosecution has proven the case. 

Fabricated evidence can be fabricated to appear to fit together.

The key is the independence of the evidence.

How do you determine / ensure that pieces of evidence are independent, especially when there are inconsistencies that must be cherry-picked around, or provenance problems with the evidence itself?

[John Iacoletti]

Hi Andrew, so if I'm understanding you correctly you're stating that, in at least some cases, it can come down to the shear quantity of evidence rather than the quality of each individual piece of evidence, is that correct?

It's that principle that leads to silly crap like "he left his wedding ring behind" as "evidence" for murder.

[John Iacoletti]

@Newbies: You'll never see any CTer post this image