An analysis from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) could not conclusively connect a bullet fragment recovered during Charlie Kirk’s autopsy to the rifle found near the scene of the rightwing political activist’s killing – and the FBI is running additional tests, lawyers for Kirk’s accused murderer said in recent court filings.

In the court filings, Tyler Robinson’s defense team also asked for a delay to a preliminary hearing scheduled in May, saying they need time to review the bullet analysis as well as an enormous amount of other material that could contribute to the suspect’s defense.

The ATF’s bullet analysis report has been kept private, but attorneys have cited snippets in other public filings that say the results were inconclusive.

The defense said in its motion that it may try to use the analysis to clear Robinson of blame during the preliminary hearing while prosecutors aim to show they have enough evidence against him to proceed with a trial.

  • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I have read somewhere that the whole “bullet forensics” process is mostly pseudoscience anyway. A quick search found this article:

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-field-of-firearms-forensics-is-flawed/

    If a shell casing wasn’t ejected on the scene (like with a bolt-action not cycled) then all they would have to analyze is the what’s-left-of-bullet which is possibly just a mess of lead and copper. May or may not have rifling marks left on it

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      Yeah, shits not like on TV.

      In fact, one of the big reason it’s like that on TV, is just so when cops lie in real life, idiots believe them.

      They consistently tell suspects “we know your gun fired the bullet” but they don’t, at most for handguns they can say “a glock fired it” because they use weird octagon rifling.

      Matching it to a specific firearm is impossible unless the barrel is real fucked up in a unique way.

      A 30-06 will have such massive deformation, I’d be shocked if any rifling is identifiable.

      That doesn’t mean the person they claim is the shooter really is tho, all types of shit happened immediately after that only make sense if there was a cover up.

      But anyone expecting a bullet to be “matched” to a rifle been watching too much CSI

      • chocrates@piefed.world
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        Which really sucks because the juries are all full of tv forensics knowledge, so when cops lie or bend the truth I bet they eat it up

        • Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works
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          I was so sad when I found out she was a fake Goth Girl.

          Not as bad as when I met Elvira at a signing in the '00s and a middle aged blond woman wearing Mom Jeans and a sweater had taken her place.

          Now I’m older and realize that Elvira is very busy and can’t be everywhere at once, so that’s why she hires helpers to fill in for her sometimes.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            Now I’m older and realize that Elvira is very busy and can’t be everywhere at once, so that’s why she hires helpers to fill in for her sometimes.

            🤭

        • kolonel@lemmy.world
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          Is that the scene the other fellow ‘helps’ by also typing on the same keyboard?! 🤣

            • cdf12345@lemmy.zip
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              Yeah the boomer.

              Basically CBS is just Boomer Copaganda.

              Pick any govt agency with an acronym and CBS probably made a show from it.

              • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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                It always was, but now that MAGA owns it, it’s getting really bad. They showed up to a murder scene, and it turns out to be some version of law enforcement, and they had to have a forced scene where they all gathered around the body and got emotional about someone they don’t know, simply because he was some cap adjacent person, then got back to work.

                Also, all the bad guys are now Muslims and terrorists and immigrants and such. I was expecting that.

                I did notice on NCIS that they are still saying Department of Defense and SecDef. Maybe CBS doesn’t approve of Department of War.

                The whole CBS line-up is turning into government copaganda - NCIS, FBI, CIA, Marshals, etc.

      • Zak@lemmy.world
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        A 30-06 will have such massive deformation

        The article describes a fragment, which is beyond mere deformation. That’s unsurprising with a high-velocity rifle round and would typically be impossible to conclusively match to the weapon that fired it. It could be possible to exclude a particular weapon (wrong caliber, obviously different rifling, etc…).

        • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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          They don’t seem to be denying fragmentation/massive deformation. In fact, the crux of their comment relies on that fragmentation.

          That massive deformation of the bullet comes from massive force, that didn’t happen to kirk’s neck.

          The point is that, with the amount of force in applied to fragment this bullet, we do not see a similar amount of force applied to Charlie’s neck. There was no large exit wound, and the projectile did not appear to impact his spine.

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        That massive deformation of the bullet comes from massive force, that didn’t happen to kirk’s neck.

        Have you even looked at the evidence? You people are fucking sheep.

        • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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          Article says “fragment”. Have you seen otherwise?

          Did the bullet stop in some conveniently placed ballistics gel behind Kirk?

            • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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              Hunting rifles like that are usually going to make a small entrance wound and larger exit wound. I haven’t seen exactly what happened to kirk because I don’t like to watch people die. But I can say from experience with deer hunting that it’s plausible for that rifle to make a narrow wound channel through a person, while being extremely deadly to them, not making a huge wound outside.

              Basically those high powered rounds are made to penetrate well through large animals, tougher than humans. Expanding and deforming of the round is intended to begin well after penetration, unlike the way handgun bullets are designed.

              So I think it’s totally possible that Robinson did it even though the bullet isn’t able to be matched

              • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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                The demonstrations I have seen with this rifle, with all types of ammunition including Old World War One ammunition that is less powerful, there’s a fist sized exit wound and bones in the neck would be broken.

                • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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                  I’m asking you because you said

                  That massive deformation of the bullet comes from massive force, that didn’t happen to kirk’s neck.

                  Have you even looked at the evidence?

                  It sounds like you’re saying the bullet wouldn’t have been deformed and that you’ve seen some evidence to that end.

                  • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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                    I never said that. I said that round would have turned his neck into hamburger.

                    That at that range it can shoot almost entirely through a half inch of steel plate. It will pulverize haunches of beef back to back, kill an elk or a grizzly bear.

                    I think the guy I replied to or somebody further upstream what you quoted though.

    • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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      Same with fingerprinting and blood spatter analysis. There is very little within the field of forensics that is backed by science.

      • gdog05@lemmy.world
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        “We’re 100% certain the one responsible for destroying the eucalyptus bush is either you or this koala. Why don’t you just admit it now and save yourself some trouble?”

      • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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        There are points of similarity in fingerprinting, and every state has their own number of points to be a match. They all accept them as evidence.

        • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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          There are points of similarity in fingerprinting, and every state has their own number of points to be a match.

          You mean they bring in an “expert” to testify that the fingerprints match… and when you give 2 “experts” the same set of fingerprints to compare, they literally come to disagreeing conclusions in 50% of tests

          It is not a scientific or analytical process with scientifically identified “points of similarity”, its just a person who is deemed an “expert”, who looks at 2 fingerprints and says “yeah these look similar, and they look similar in X different places so 👍”

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            There are the actual standards, then there are prosecutors perverting them. Prosecutors are the least trustworthy people on the planet. Total pieces of shit, no argument here. But fingerprints themselves aren’t junk science as I’ve read, not like past hair analysis, blood spatter, bite mark analysis, 911 voice recording analysis, or any number of other junk sciences. As I understand it.

            But don’t let me dismiss your point out of hand, what gave you this opinion, did you read something as such, you have a source on this?

      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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        I searched and couldn’t find any information about fingerprints not being admissible in any courts. I’ve found a lot of stories about how they aren’t 100% accurate (closer to 95-99 percent), but not one story about how fingerprints were not admissible.

        Where are these “many courts” that don’t accept fingerprints?

        • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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          Did you try?

          fingerprint evidence is not currently permitted to be reported in court unless examiners claim absolute certainty that a mark has been left by a particular suspect. This courtroom certainty is based purely on the opinion of experts

          https://science.psu.edu/news/barriers-use-fingerprint-evidence-court-unlocked-statistical-model

          Fingeprints are not admissable, just some guy’s opinion, because fingerprint identification has no real basis in science. And no, they aren’t 95-99% accurate (especially because it is just some guy eyeballing it), when tested by giving multiple “experts” the same set of prints, the “experts” come to disagreeing conclusions about if the prints match or not over half the time.

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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          I seem to recall that the debate is more about partial prints, which are often all that’s found at a scene. A “100% match” of a small part of a print isn’t the same as a 100% match to the whole print. And even full prints can be of varying quality: the print can be smeared to varying degrees, or on a substrate that allows for diffusion of the print once it’s made (e.g, an oily surface).

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      And even if it does, they’ll be so mangled as to be useless. Like you could say "ok the rifle has four grooves at 1:8” but you’ve got a fraction of a bullet that was squished into an entirely different shape on impact.