Musketeer,
Paragraph 1. That was my point with the attorneys trying to sway the jury in their favor. The opposing counsel can and will say anything to get the jury to have the emotions you are talking about. It is up to your attorney to set them strait. It doesn't matter if it is about a gun or not, they will try and dupe an uninformed jury if they can.
Paragraphs 2 & 3. We don't know for sure if that is the case. The reason the court threw out the testimony for the reloads might have been because they didn't recognize the expert witness as an expert witness. It might have been for any number of procedural errors that could have been avoided, there are many reasons testimony is withheld, including a lame attempt at trying to confuse the jury and make them get emotional about something other than the "facts". Juries have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is quilty of the crimes he is charged with. If the defense brought Paris Hilton in to say she killed herself because she was blonde do you think that might affect at least one person in the jury? If you think the answer is no, then you haven't met many jurists. Also I've said it several times, there was only one source for the information for that case, and I know this hurts you to hear it, but it is of questionable accuracy.
Paragraph 4. If the first case had need of ballistic testing they might have done it. But there wasn't really an issue of if there was a reload or not. The issue was, the medical examiner determined she didn't shoot herself so who did? The defendant was the only other person there so what is his story? She shot herself because blah blah blah blah reloads. He thinks the medical examiner is an idiot that doesn't know anything about gunshot wounds? I would like to see a retrial of that case, if it's real, to see how it goes. And I would like to see two real expert witnesses give their testimony on the reload evidence, but I don't think you'll find two that will do it. An expert witness has a reputation to think about or he will no longer be an expert witness. If he goes into a courtroom and starts blowing sand at the jury, and is shown to be doing just that by the other expert witness, guess what? His credibility as an expert witness is gone.
And once again you summed it up yourself.
Once one of your statements is proven, to the court, to be wrong your credibility with the jury goes downhill fast. Those statements about the dead criminal's threatening actions now are seen in a different light because YOU are a liar... See the problem here?
Harold Fish's statements to the police didn't coincide to the witness's. He sounded like a liar and his statements about the dead (alledged) criminals threatening actions were seen in a different light. That was the problem there.
Do you yourself feel that Harold Fish was justified in shooting that man? If you were on the jury, and even knowing that the 10mm isn't a death ray device, would you have said he did nothing wrong?
And presented with the evidence as was given in the other case, would you say he was innocent? That he was not responsible for his wifes death? This came up in an earlier thread: even if he didn't pull the trigger, given her past history of attempted suicides he loaded light ammunition, taught her to shoot and left the gun out for her to have access to it. Would you have done the same thing if it was your wife? He claimed he loved her too.
As shooters and gun owners we get too wrapped up in some of these cases to look at the whole picture. A man is not guilty becasue he owns a gun or reloads his own ammunition, but he isn't innocent because of it either. When the question of using reloads comes up these two cases are brought in as "proof". Neither case is about the issue and they are both bad examples because the person sounds guilty in spite of the claims otherwise.
And I for one do not think it is good for the average citizen to carry what the police carry. Everytime there is a police shooting there are countless hours wasted trying to sort out who shot which rounds. But I won't offend you with who's idea that is.