![]() To link a bullet with a weapon, the task of the examiner is a difficult one. Consequently, “If investigators recover bullets or cartridge cases from a crime scene, forensic examiners can test-fire a suspect’s gun to see if it produces ballistic fingerprints that match the evidence”. 3Īccording to ballistics experts, the theory of firearm identification holds that these striations and impressions in bullets and cartridge cases, have microscopic imperfections due to random variations in manufacturing and repeated use, 4 and that therefore, they are unique, like “ballistic fingerprints”. These striations and impressions are known as “toolmarks”. The softer metal of the cartridge case explodes backward with equal force against the stronger metal of the mechanism that absorbs the recoil, called the breech face, leaving impressions. When guns are shot, the softer metal of the bullets explodes forward impacting the stronger metal of the barrel’s ridges and groves, leaving striations. In the last trial, Balash claimed absolute certainty regarding the match: “It has to be 100 percent or I will not offer that opinion.” 1 That is, the murder weapon and Doyle Simpson’s gun matched. At the subsequent five trials David Balash testified that the bullets found at the crime scene and the bullets found in the wooden post came from the same weapon. The Mississippi Crime Lab in Jackson matched the bullets.Īfter Flowers had been found guilty in the first trial, the Prosecutors wanted a second opinion, and the court appointed David Balash, “a retired Michigan state trooper who’s a ballistics and explosives expert with decades of experience in the field,” to review the ballistics evidence in the case. They compared those two bullets with one bullet that investigators had recovered from a mattress at the crime scene. ![]() In order to do that, they dug two bullets from a wooden post on the property of Simpson’s mother, which Doyle had used as a shooting range. Investigators wanted to match the bullets in the crime scene to Doyle Simpson’s weapon. ![]() 380 had been stolen from his unlocked car that morning. The same day of the murders, a man named Doyle Simpson, who was Curtis Flower’s step-uncle, reported to the police that his. From the projectiles in the crime scene, they could determine that the murder weapon was a. The investigators in the Curtis Flowers case never found the murder weapon that was used in 1996 to kill the four employees at Tardy Furniture. In this report, we will dig into the reliability of some forms of forensic evidence including ballistics, shoeprints and gunshot residues. ![]() Those advances, however, also have revealed that, in some cases, substantive information and testimony based on faulty forensic science analyses may have contributed to wrongful convictions of innocent people. These forensic evidence together helped send Flowers to death row, but critics argue that this field is subjective and unscientific.įor decades, the forensic science disciplines have produced valuable evidence that has contributed to the successful prosecution and conviction of criminals as well as to the exoneration of innocent people. The case against Curtis Flowers involves three threads of forensic evidence: the bullets found in crime scene, the bloody shoeprint next to a victim’s body, and the gunshot residue found on Flowers’s right hand. ![]() The Reliability of Forensic Evidence: The Case of Curtis FlowersĬompiled by Jiaxin Zhu, Liangcheng Yi, Wenqian Ma, Ziyue Zhu, and Guillem Esquius ![]()
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