Re: The Strange Values of President Bush

>>>>> "dalspartan" == DALSPARTAN  <[email protected]> writes:

  dalspartan> How can ballistic fingerprinting help anything?  Unlike
  dalspartan> human fingerprinting, metal deteriorates.  Mr. Clark should
  dalspartan> learn the facts before mouthing off.

If it's never possible -- which you imply -- to match expended ordinance
to the gun that fired it, why do ballistic experts testify every day in
courts around the country?

For example, from a criminal justice program at a university in North
Carolina, I found this:

    BALLISTICS - The science of forensic ballistics is well-established
    but frequently challenged. Most courts will allow testimony showing
    that the bullet which killed a person was fired from a weapon
    belonging to a defendant. Likewise, testimony as to breechface and/or
    firing-pin markings, striation patterns, and gunpowder residue is
    commonly accepted. Glass and wound pattern analysis has yet to gain
    widespread acceptance. Courtroom demonstrations are usually
    prohibited, so laboratory results are often substituted, with this
    opening the door to whether the lab is comparable to the FBI's lab or
    another major laboratory. There are a variety of different ballistic
    techniques, but they all usually have to do with science of motion for
    projectiles.

How about another example, this one from CNN:

    ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- Ballistic tests on the rifle found in the
    car of the men authorities believe were involved in the
    Washington-area sniper attacks matched the weapon to the bullets in
    all but three of the 14 shootings, law enforcement officials said
    Thursday evening.

    The rifle "has been forensically determined to be the murder weapon,"
    Michael Bouchard of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
    told a news conference in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Here's an even more striking example:

    COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) -- South Carolina taxi driver John
    Orner was shot in the head and dumped over a cliff in 1961 -- a crime
    that remained unsolved for decades.

    ...

    Three weeks later, police got a break when a Tennessee state trooper
    stopped Edward Freiburger, an 18-year-old soldier who had gone AWOL
    from Ft. Jackson in South Carolina.

    Freiburger was carrying a loaded .32-caliber revolver when he was
    taken in to custody. The gun was the same type used to kill Orner, and
    detectives were able to prove that Freiburger bought the gun in a
    Columbia pawn shop the day before the slaying.

    Ballistics tests were inconclusive, however, and Freiburger was
    released from custody without being charged. The Orner case went
    "cold," in police parlance, meaning there were no new leads or
    evidence. Eventually, the gun, the crime scene photographs and the
    rest of the evidence were boxed up -- and stayed boxed up for almost
    four decades.

    The case was reopened in 1997, when the sheriff's office created a
    cold case squad.

    "I was somewhat amazed and fascinated that they had the file from 39
    years ago at the time ... and some of the photographs, and that they
    had located some of the physical evidence that were still there at the
    time," prosecutor Knox McMahon said.

    Many of the original detectives had died, along with other witnesses
    and friends of the victims, making the case difficult to
    prosecute. Freiburger's alibi witness, a fellow soldier, was also
    dead.

    But science had improved over the years, and advances in ballistic
    testing meant that investigators were now able to tie Freiburger to
    the murder.

    "The weapon has a fingerprint that it puts on the bullet," Lott
    said. "The ballistic expert was able to go back and identify the that
    fingerprint that gun made when it fired the bullet and say, 'That is
    the gun that fired the bullet that killed Mr. Orner.' "

    Freiburger had moved back to Fort Wayne, Indiana, had a clean record
    and was living a quiet life. His past came back to haunt him in April
    2001.

The ballistic fingerpriting which Bush opposes is based on precisely the
same scientific principles and facts. Even if ballistic fingerprinting
isn't *always 100% useful*, that doesn't mean it couldn't be useful in
some cases, and its utility in those cases may well justify its widespread
legislative adoption.

Are you sure I'm the one using inaccurate facts? Either way, I don't see
the point of being nasty about it.

Kendall Clark
-- 
Jazz is only what you are. -- Louis Armstrong