OT? Forensic Files

It is also incredible how much time and effort the police put into the crimes. There was a murder in Florida and a suspect from Georgia. They had to prove he was there. The police went down I75, got off at each exit and drove two miles in each direction. Finally, at one exit, a couple of miles was a WalMart so the looked at tapes and saw the suspect buying supplies needed.

Yeah, if the real cops were as good as "Munch" Baltimore would solve more than 35% of their homicides. It's TV, just a Roadrunner cartoon with human actors.

I got hired by a lawyer to check drug charges against his client. Police had arrested him with 50 small bags of crack. Police labs actually weighted each bag and ran analysis for crack on each bag. Pretty thorough.

When I was a teenager, a group of kids from a neighboring town were going around to farms and stealing gas out of the farmers' unlocked tanks that they use to fuel their equipment. They got caught when one of the guys left his wallet behind at the scene. Things unraveled quickly after that.

Yeah, specially when its not just another dead gang banger.

On Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:11:43 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us to digest...

I understand and share your concerns. One lesson to be learned is the exonerations resulting from DNA matching.

I was in MD when a law was being passed that all firearms must have bullets on file for comparison, the shop owners were all saying that it was another futile mandate. Is Glock going to separate the ones going to MD and test fire them and submit the bullets? Were the gun shops supposed to get a certified gunsmith to fire them? What a crock.

If you really thought about it take a Glock (for example) change the barrel in it, do your dirty work, destroy the barrel, switch back to the original, wait. They can't even get everyday crimes solved, what do you think will happen when a little imagination is involved?

Another issue that pisses me off is asset forfeiture. Nuff said.

On Wed, 2 Sep 2020 13:11:38 -0400, Frank posted for all of us to digest...

And then the stories sneak out as how the lab/techs weren't certified or the lab was known to be friendly to police. I presume that is why the lawyer had you check the evidence. I doubt if they had a public defender this would get done...

I am beginning to sound like I am anti-cop but nothing could be further than the truth.

On Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:16:59 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us to digest...

That was a good show and Belzer was great at his roles.

This is just one of several articles on the subject. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling was unanimous.

Remember Columbo?

It was still a TV show, not reality and the people who believe all of the stuff they say on Law & Order are just kidding themselves. (read the critics on the IMDB "errors" web page) The reality is if you have the murder weapon to test and the fired case or the bullet you can argue they came from the same gun but just trying to match it up with a half million other guns is a futile exercise. Too many things can change the marks made, even if you don't start swapping parts. Shooting cheap Russian (steel) ammo will polish a barrel clean pretty fast. A few thousand rounds will start to wipe out the rifling and the factory striations will be gone long before that. The steel cases do the same thing to the extractor and chamber. It really doesn't matter much to a real criminal anyway because they know enough to get rid of the gun.

That article boils down to:

"People are still going to lose their property without being convicted of a crime, they're still going to have their property seized," Mr. Hottot said. "The new thing is that they can now say at the end of it all, whether I'm guilty or not, I can argue that it was excessive."

This was a police lab. Lawyer wanted me to check evidence particularly weight and it turned out his client had enough crack to be considered a dealer. There was a second one there which I did not mention that had considerably more coke enough to be a distributor which even had a heavier penalty. The lawyer stiffed me, probably because what I saw was not good for his clients.

Not a ton of money as it was only a couple hours of my time but after that I only worked for lawyers on a retainer and at double my normal rate.

Yah, those civil asset forfeiture "victims" din do nuffin. Criminals are always innocent. LOL

There are plenty of examples of people losing their stuff with no evidence of any crime, before, during or after the forfeiture. They just happened to have a lot of money on them and nothing else incriminating. (except maybe an ethnic problem)

Type wrongfully convicted into your browser.

On Wed, 2 Sep 2020 18:40:03 -0400, Frank posted for all of us to digest...

They would stiff their own mothers if it made them a buck. What's their favorite words: It depends.

It only takes one time to learn a lesson ;)

On Wed, 2 Sep 2020 15:35:42 -0500, Dean Hoffman posted for all of us to digest...

I watched a couple of his shows but was never impressed, just me.