I get the most interesting email.

There have been the room temperature I.Q. cases wanting help building a bomb which I talk about frequently.  There are also cases where I don’t talk much, if any, but are just as interesting. 

There was a case where a public defender wanted help defending against federal bomb making charge.  I thought Ry and I were going to be doing some testing for them.  But the case was dropped after the public defender told the court they had an expert who didn’t think it would explode but wanted to test a duplicate of the device to make sure. My guess is the the prosecutor knew it wouldn’t/couldn’t/shouldn’t explode but figured putting a 15 year old girl in the slammer was just another way to get a few laughs and get more points toward their next promotion.  Don’t ever forget we have a legal system, not a justice system.

Due my Modern Ballistics program I have received lots of requests for ballistics help.  In one case (IIRC, it’s been several years now) someone was investigating the possibility of a wrongful death case against a police officer.  It wasn’t a problem my program was designed for and I couldn’t help.  One request was the defense in a murder case.  Using all the data I had at my disposal I still had a couple unknown variables that could push the answer either way.  And even if those numbers were tied down the answer depended on the skill and knowledge of the shooter as much as the physics involved.

This week I received my first request for help in defending against a first degree murder charge (three shots to the center of mass from a large caliber semi-auto pistol) where the defendant had a concealed weapons permit.  I’ll blog the details tomorrow.  The guy goes on trial Monday.