The Blade Runner and Bullet Trajectory

 

 

Prognosticators on the Oscar Pistorius case estimate that the trajectory of the four bullets that killed his girlfriend, are everything to the case.  It is likely in Pretoria South Africa there may be a real ballistics investigation because the defendant and victim Reeva Steencamp are white. Ballistics investigation may be even  more important due to the extensive media coverage.  The second cause seems more likely since cell phone video of Johannesburg cops dragging an immigrant taxi driver handcuffed to a police paddy wagon – a black on black crime – led to the indictment of eight police officers.  No international exposure, no indictments.  Continuing due process in the fair prosecution of the police officers is contingent on continuous international attention.  This is the same for the trajectories of Oscar Pistorius’ four bullets.  The prognosticators await the analysis that a court under scrutiny may produce.

 

Do you know where courts operate away from scrutiny and avoid the analysis of bullet trajectories; that would be the State of Colorado’s eighth judicial district, most specifically, case #01CR465.

 

What really happens in quotidian (everyday) cases is that the state compiles a few inculpatory assumptions – more sensational the better – that become the “discovery” of the case.  The defense does not conduct counter discovery.  It wouldn’t matter.  The offense has the privilege of accusation and the defense only rationalizes. This accepted masquerade advances accusation to the unproven basis for conviction and sentencing.

 

Solution:  Constant on audio/video monitors in all court rooms, that feed to publicly subscribable links.  This is the equivalent of police dash cam coverage for the judiciary.  It can only improve the civil performance of the courts.

 

Peace, Jason

 

Mary-Ellen comments on the implications of the lack of public awareness on how the courts function:  If you recall in the last blog entry, Materially False Information, Jason’s public defender declared a false distance of the gun shot at four feet.  Jason’s description of the incident put him nearly up against the victim, Marc Bender. A gun shot from four feet away would have been a straight through and through.

 

Four feet is not so according to the autopsy report which is verbatim: “…slightly asymmetrical abrasion collar measuring up to 1/16 inch and being most prominent at the 7o”clock margin of the entrance wound and a dense stippling pattern extending out to 1 1/4 inches radially from the center of the wound.  A ¼ inch rim of dark discoloration possibly representing soot immediately surrounded the entrance site.” “The wound path was directed approximately 45 degrees from right to left, approximately 45 degrees upward, and approximately 45 degrees from front to back.”

 

Present at the autopsy were Coroner Sina, Investigator’s Fairman and Miller as well as officer’s Hudson, Gilliam, Koenig, and Josey. Quoting Josey, “I also observed powder burns around the wound and the consensus of opinion was that the end of the gun barrel was within a few inches of the victim’s skin and no more than approximately eight inches away when the gun was fired.”

 

The gun was test fired at 1 to 12 inches.  The Colorado Bureau of Investigation never received this information or the gun to do their testing due to the need to sweep Jason’s case under the rug as discretely as possible.

 

Most people are under the misconception that the appeals process reviews evidence.  It does not.  It only reviews “procedure.”  An appeals court, even if it came across evidence that exonerated someone could do nothing if the procedure used was proper.