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Old April 10, 2021, 05:21 PM   #3
MarkCO
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Join Date: October 21, 1998
Location: Colorado, USA
Posts: 4,296
Quote:
Originally Posted by TXAZ View Post
Saw the tail end of a movie, where the suspect happily surrendered his weapon (same caliber as the murder weapon) to the police for forensics testing, and it came back a match for the caliber but negative for his gun....

But he did it with that gun as we found out in the end proudly displaying the gun to a friend, but you don't know how.

I'm guessing he either swapped the barrel (can a glock / S&W / ?? barrel fit in some other brand ?), or possibly sanded / slightly machined the inside of the barrel after the murder.

Any hints?
I worked on a case where a woman was charged with murder and the ATF and CBI crime lab affidavits stated that her Glock was the murder weapon. After my report, the prosecutor was forced to withdraw both expert reports and affidavits from those agents and then the case was dismissed. It was years later that the actual murderer confessed to get out of a life sentence in another case.

Yes, forensic evidence is difficult to prove, even with a probable match, unless a murder weapon is recovered at the scene and linked, by other means, to the accused as well. Beyond a shadow of a doubt (from criminal) is a VERY high threshold to meet. More likely than not (for civil cases) is a phenomenally easier threshold to meet.

I'll not go into specifics on the hows, but it is not that complicated to make a gun not match forensically even if used to commit a crime and recovered after the fact by LE. Fortunately, most crime is not committed by those with enough knowledge of the subject to do so.
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