savage362 said:
ESPN's link to all the
documents.
Had the time to skim this today. There are a few areas that might give him some traction, were he to try the case. His best argument might be that Wallace did the shooting - however, A.H. is still culpable under accomplice/accessory theory.
Since Wallace got a deal, I expect he will roll on A.H. and testify against him. You can usually mess up those guys at trial, but, depending on the facts, sometimes it's not enough to benefit the defendant (i.e., the jury finds the witness sketchy, but if they testify in a way that lines up with all the other evidence, the defendant goes down.)
My bottom line is that unless something funky happens, A.H. is toast.
Based on the expected evidence at trial (as we now know it) he should probably take any deal that results in him possibly getting out while he's still alive (i.e., anything under 50 years.) Assuming any such deal is offered by the state.
***
As far as the gun thing goes, guns are only useful in criminal prosecution if they are A) tied to the crime itself (and) B) tied to the defendant.
You get A) through ballistics analysis - does the gun match the caliber of any bullets recovered? Do the bullets show any rifling patterns which suggest they were shot from that particular gun? Do the casings show any patterns that indicate they were fired from that particular gun?
You get B) through finding the gun in the defendant's actual or constructive possession, showing the gun was purchased/owned by the defendant, finding fingerprints on the gun or DNA on the gun. Sometimes you can get fibers from a dirty gun. You might also be able to do a test for gunpowder residue on the defendant's hands (which can only show at best that he shot a gun within a certain period of time, you cannot determine what type of gun was shot or when it happened.)
So basically, the best way to use a gun in a crime is to make sure it can't be traced back to you, through ownership/possession or physical evidence. You don't have to destroy the gun. If you buy it on the black market, use it, then clean it well enough, you could mail it to the cops afterward. Or drop it in a pond. It really does not matter since there's no way to connect the gun to you.
In this case, the state has one "half" of the ballistics evidence from the scene. They have a witness to the shooting, plus photographs of A.H. holding what appears to be a gun. They found a shell casing in A.H.'s rental car which matches the shell casings left by the body, and is of the same caliber as those which killed Lloyd. There's a window of time where A.H. could have disposed of the gun. (I.e., there's nothing suspicious about the gun being missing.)
The prosecutors don't
need the actual gun in this case. If they found it in a place that A.H. (or an accomplice could have disposed of it in). And/or found evidence of its purchase, they could introduce that evidence to a jury. But it wouldn't even be icing on the cake. It would just be more circumstantial evidence.
Icing would be A.H.'s DNA on the gun, plus a ballistic match to the bullets which killed Lloyd.
Depending on how the gun was disposed of, the DNA evidence might be there or might be erased. DNA, *if* deposited, breaks down for various environmental reasons - bleach does a pretty good job on it if you want to hasten the process.
Fingerprints could be on various parts of the handgun, internal and external. They're destroyed by simply wiping those surfaces down with a cloth. Fingerprints have greatly variable lives - if the print is formed by your body's oil (sweat then touch glass and you leave prints) then UV and humidity and dust can break down that pattern of oil pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you leave a fingerprint with paint or ink (instead of body oil), it can pretty much be preserved forever. (Hence fingerprint cards.) Gun prints are sometimes left by the oil that's used to clean/lube guns. Depending on how dirty the oil and the grade of viscosity, prints on the internal parts of guns (say the clip on a revolver or a bullet inside the clip) can stay for quite awhile. Especially if the gun isn't fired.
The ballistics info would likely be there, unless the inside of the barrel were disfigured - you'd need something to severely scrape it up so that the rifling was destroyed and investigators couldn't use it to fire a bullet, and compare that bullet's deformations to a bullet recovered from the crime scene. And again, that's only useful if you can tie the gun to the shooter. Ballistics alone does not do that. So, a clean untraceable gun found in some place that anyone could access is pretty much worthless to an investigation.
Gun tracing depends on records. Generally if a gun is black market and has passed through the hands of several dealers, there's no way the state will find out who bought it. However, if a gun is bought directly (or which goes through only one black market seller, who may be incarcerated/traceable), ownership can be proven. To do that you simply look at the gun's serial number(s) and reference them to a database. Even legitimate dealers can screw up records though, so it's not a sure thing. You can file off serial numbers, but I've never seen a case where anyone actually bothered to do this. Mostly, they're just bought from friends who bought them from a guy who knew a guy from the next state over who got it from his cousin who died. (So the trace finds the cousin who died, at best.)