EVIDENCE FROM THE WEAPON AND PROJECTILE.

Evidence of great value may be obtained often from the weapon itself. First of all, from the position in which it is found, as stated above; second, from a careful examination of itself. It should be noted whether there be any blood upon it, and whether this be so fresh as not to have caused any rust; whether it may possibly be so smeared with blood as to indicate a hand-to-hand conflict; or whether any part of the weapon may have been used as a club or bludgeon, as would be shown by the presence upon it of hair entangled in dry blood. When such blood is removed from the weapon it should be carefully examined with the microscope, since from the detection and identification of hair or fibres of fabric evidence of the greatest value may be adduced. Next it should be ascertained whether a weapon shows signs of having been recently discharged or whether it be evident that it could not have been so, and such determination of the time element as may be afforded by a study of this kind should be contrasted with that made after a study of the wound. If the weapon be a revolver or a repeating arm of any kind, it should be determined if possible how many cartridges or bullets have been fired, and whether at or about the same time, and this information should be compared with the evidences obtained from the body and from the room or locality in which the suicide or murder occurred. If, for instance, it be determined that three cartridges have been fired and but two bullet-wounds are found in the body, an examination of the room may show where went the third bullet. Next the calibre of the weapon should be noted and the weight of the ball which it discharged and its dimensions should be compared with any which may be found in or about the body. The weight of the bullets attached to cartridges of various sizes and makes is usually stamped upon the packages in which they are sold, or can readily be obtained from the makers of the same. A bullet taken from a body weighing after its removal more than do the other bullets undischarged in the weapon by which an injury is alleged to have been inflicted is rather presumptive evidence against the injury from that source.

Can a Bullet Lose in Weight between the Time when it Leaves the Bore of a Gun and its Discovery in a Body?—Here springs up a question upon which some very interesting evidence has been adduced in different trials. To discuss this matter completely the question should be divided into two, the first being:

Does a Bullet Suffer Loss of Weight during its Course through the Piece and the Air before it comes in Contact with the Body?—A personal letter received from Captain Charles Shaler, of the Ordnance Department of the United States Army, in reply to certain questions, tends to fully settle that a lead bullet suffers a certain loss of weight in the barrel due to the friction between the bullet and the bore; this is known as “leading” and varies according to circumstances. “Patching” the bullet is often resorted to in order to reduce the leading; lubrication is also practised. The fusing of a bullet takes place especially with lead bullets. A ball which has been partly fused in the bore will lose the fused portions in the bore or in flight, and will move irregularly on account of the resulting irregularity of form. A .45-calibre, 500-grain service bullet, lead alloyed with tin, was weighed without lubricant and was found to weigh 500.5 grains. It was then lubricated in the cannelures and was fired into a butt composed of three barrels placed end to end and filled with sawdust. Tho bullet was recovered, no lubricant being found in the cannelures, and re-weighed, the weight obtained being 485.5. The loss of weight was, therefore, 15 grains or three per cent, some of which may have been due to the bullet penetrating the sawdust. A German-silver “jacketed” .30-calibre bullet, weighing before firing 231 grains, fired without lubrication, when recovered and re-weighed was found to have suffered a loss of weight of one-half grain or one-quarter of one per cent. The other part of the main question is:

Does the Bullet Lose in Weight in its Course through the Body?—This is, of course, intended to pertain only to those instances in which there is no evidence of splitting or division of the bullet, and refers only to the effect of friction or attrition. June 5th, 1878, in Saratoga County, Mrs. Jesse Billings was accidentally killed by a bullet. Her husband was arrested and tried for murder. On the first trial he was acquitted. A second trial, however, was held, and some very interesting expert testimony was brought out on matters pertaining to these questions. The medical evidence is published in full by Dr. Lewis Balch, of Albany, in the Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York for 1881. The rifle from which the bullet was supposed to have been fired was found in a well, and was sworn to have belonged to Jesse Billings. In it was found a cartridge of the type known as the Commercial Long No. 44. This gun became an important factor in the case, and most of the evidence as to whether it was the weapon with which the murder had been committed was referred to the medical experts. The defence in the first trial claimed that all the lead fired was found in Mrs. Billings’ head. On the second trial the same claim was not made, but that it was a smaller bullet than a .44 and its weight less than 220 grains; that in consequence this rifle could not have been that from which the shot was fired, for it only called for a .44 ball, and that it would have thrown a bullet with such force that it must have gone entirely through the head. They further claimed that powder-marks and grains of powder were found in the window-sash, showing that the weapon was fired near the window, and that the hole in the glass was not large enough to admit a full-sized .44 ball. The verdict was mainly won upon these statements. A question for the medical experts to answer was, what would be the effect upon the skull of a .44-calibre ball fired from a Ballard rifle, the ball weighing 220 grains and the charge of powder being 28 grains? also what would be the effect upon the ball? Experts from the Ordnance Corps and from the rifle factories were able to testify that the bullet found in Mrs. Billings’ head was originally a .44-calibre ball; also that its markings showed the peculiar left-handed twist used in rifling this particular arm. The defence maintained that it could not have been a .44, claiming that the hole in the window-pane showed that. The original window produced in court was no criterion, since from repeated handling the hole made by the bullet had become enlarged and changed in shape. Both of the experts for the defence believed that the ball could not make a hole smaller than itself when passing through glass. This necessarily supposes that the ball after being fired is the same calibre as before, which, as shown above, is not always the case. So Dr. Balch fired forty-five rounds from the Billings rifle with 220 grains of lead and 28 grains of powder. The shots were fired through glass set in sashes, the glass being 28×13¼, double thick and American make. The rifle was discharged at varying angles and at distances varying from two to seventy feet, and he obtained one shot where the hole made would not admit a full-sized ball. His summary was as follows:

Balls unable to pass through1
Balls partly passed3
Balls passed18
Cartridge passed21
Glass broken out2
——
Total45

Other rounds were fired from a Colt’s navy revolver, old style, .36 calibre, at distances varying from ten to twenty feet. The holes made were so large that the barrels and ramrods could be passed without touching. The examination of the one instance noted above where the aperture in the glass was smaller than the ball is explained by Balch as follows: “A ball conoidal in form, passing with great velocity, strikes glass, penetrates, but does not break the glass at the point of entrance. The point struck is instantly disintegrated, and so rapid is the stroke that it has not time to call upon the surrounding particles for support; hence the smallness of the hole. As glass is made it varies in elasticity; some parts which are to be cut into panes cool faster than others. A bullet striking the portion of the glass which has cooled quickly strikes an object which will yield somewhat to the force; in doing this a hole will be made smaller than if that more brittle had been struck. Furthermore, all rifles taper more or less from breech to muzzle, that is, the muzzle will measure one or more thousandths or hundredths less than the breech. The bullet being forced through the narrow aperture yields to the pressure and becomes smaller. The gun under consideration was measured at the New York Armory, and found to be .44 at the breech or chamber and .423 at the muzzle. Considering these various facts, statements that a ball of known size will make a hole through glass smaller than the size of the ball when fired do not admit of doubt as to their verity. Some statements bearing on this same point contained in a recent letter from Captain Shaler, of the United States Army, deserve mention here. The following experiment was made in Washington by Captain Lyon in October, 1880:

“Noticing a statement in a newspaper to the effect that a ball fired from a rifle would, in passing through glass, make a round hole smaller than the diameter of the ball used, the following experiment was made:

“Service ammunition used, in a calibre .45 Springfield rifle to penetrate glass.

Time Fired.Size of Hole made
in Glass, inches.		Remarks.
10.570The frame holding the glass was placed 25yards from the muzzle of the gun.
20.550
30.600
40.600
50.575
60.575
70.590
80.620
90.600
Average size of hole0.586
Calibre of bullet0.458
———
Difference0.125

“From the above it will be noted that there is no uniformity in the size of the holes and that they all exceed the diameter of the bullet.

“These experiments were supplemented by some made recently in which a sash containing six panes of ordinary window-glass was placed at twenty-five yards from the firer and the glass was successively penetrated (a separate pane being used in each case) by bullets from a service .45-calibre Springfield rifle, a .30-calibre Springfield rifle, a .45-calibre Colt’s revolver and a .22-calibre revolver. In every case the hole made was much larger than the bullet making it.”

With reference also to the effect of a ball being smaller than its original diameter after it leaves the piece, Captain Shaler states: “All very compressible bullets forced by inertia lose a certain amount even though they also gain force by slugging. Forcing by inertia tends to shorten the bullet and increase the diameter, while slugging tends to lengthen the bullet and reduce its diameter. Whether the bullet is smaller after it leaves the piece depends upon the bullet used and the method of forcing employed.”

To return to the Billings case, it was claimed that the bullet was also too small. It weighed 165 grains, 55 less than when it was fired from the rifle. Balch found in firing at human skulls, the subjects in all the trials but two being placed in a sitting posture, sometimes with a sash like the Billings window in front of the subject, that the ball lost lead in accordance with the resistance it met with and the amount of bone ploughed in its passage. These experiments conclusively prove that the weight of a ball taken from a body after being fired, it having traversed a bone in its flight, is by no means evidence of its weight before firing; in other words, a ball always loses some lead when passing through bone. With the same rifle as that produced at the trial he made a series of experiments in the dissecting-room, endeavoring to make a bullet enter the skull at the same point and in nearly as possible the same direction as in the case of the murdered woman. In six such experiments there were varying losses of lead, all the bullets used being the same general weight. In two trials the distance was but ten feet from the muzzle, yet more lead was lost than in any of the other four. The least loss recorded took place at the longest distance, thirty-five feet. This in part accounts for the loss of lead, for at ten feet the bullet has not acquired its greatest penetrating power, for he showed by experiment that a 220-grain bullet fired at a human skull will lose more lead than was missing from the Billings bullet, thus disposing of the question raised by the defence that a ball could not have weighed 220 grains before being fired.

Just how to account for the missing lead has never been clearly established. We have to remember that a few grains may be left in the bore of a rifle, especially if rusty; that in passing through glass another portion is lost, and finally it is scarcely conceivable that any bullet should penetrate an adult skull, especially in the neighborhood of the mastoid processes, without losing quite a perceptible percentage of its mass by friction.

It was also claimed by the defence that the ball taken from Mrs. Billings’ head had been fired from a weapon of low velocity, which was held to account for the fact that the ball failed to pass out of the skull. The rifle when tested at the Government Arsenal showed a mean velocity of 999 feet per second. Had it been as high as was supposed by the defence, namely, 1,300 or 1,400 feet, the argument that a bullet driven with this force would always go through the skull would have more weight, but with the velocity found by actual test the energy of the ball was lessened to nearly one-half of that supposed. The bullet which killed Mrs. Billings did not pass entirely through the skull. It ploughed into the opposite side and broke before it a triangular piece of bone which broke the skin externally. This shows the resistance of external fascia against perforation. A study of the lines of fracture in this particular case proved very interesting, but perhaps would be somewhat irrelevant here. A measurement of the skull and of the bullet-track through it shows the former to have been of more than ordinary thickness and density, and the channel ploughed in the bone by the bullet along the base of it to have been nearly two inches in length. Dr. Balch gives the following conclusions to his very interesting evidence: 1st. A leaden ball passing through bone loses lead in proportion to the amount of bone traversed. 2d. If the petrous portion of the temporal bone be the part struck by the ball and struck squarely at the base, that portion of the bone is crumbled or broken in such exceedingly fine pieces as to defy restoration. 3d. That if the ball struck any part of the skull the petrous portion will be broken, but can be usually recognized and generally put together again. 4th. That a ball of given calibre fired through glass may make a hole enough smaller than the full size of the ball before firing to prevent an unfired ball of like calibre passing.

In all this kind of experimentation upon cadavers for the purpose of eliciting evidence by reproducing as nearly as possible ante-mortem injuries, we must not forget that Casper has strongly insisted that “it is extremely difficult to break up the organic cohesion of dead organs.... If we endeavor to fracture the skull of a dead adult we shall find that an amount of force which if applied in life would indubitably produce fissures if not fracture, or complete crushing of the skull, leaves the dead skull quite uninjured.... The most powerful blows struck down upon the body, laid down horizontally, were without result, and only after repeated violent blows were we able to produce perhaps one or a few fissures in the occipital or parietal bone, or in the temporal bone (squamous portion), and usually in the latter. We were unable to produce more considerable effects, such as complete smashing of the skull or fissures of its base, even in one single instance. The dead skull seems to have considerably more power of resistance, and after its removal fissures of the bone were more easily produced by similar blows” (Vol. I., p. 245). And again: “The result of my experiments on the dead body in regard to gunshot wounds could only be to make more complete the proof of the resistance of the dead corporeal tissues, in contradistinction to the tissues when alive. After I had already learned this peculiarity from my experiments with contused wounds, this peculiar resistent property was found to be confirmed in a most remarkable manner” (“Forensic Medicine,” Vol. I., p. 271).

If the number of bullets known to have been fired, or, more important still, which have been found exceeds the number which could have been discharged from the weapon in question, a very large element of doubt and uncertainty is introduced which must be quieted by other and more circumstantial evidence. Should two different weapons be in question, it is very necessary to establish from which of them the bullets have been discharged. This can be done mainly by weight and evident calibre of the bullets, or some other peculiarity; possibly in disputed cases even by analysis of the metal.

Wounds by Shot-Guns.—In most of what has been said it has been supposed that the injury has been inflicted by an arm of the kind commonly described under the terms pistol, revolver, or rifle. Gunshot wounds are, however, occasionally inflicted with shot-guns and a charge of shot varying in size from small bird-shot up to that generally known as buck-shot. It is characteristic of such missiles that they separate after their discharge from the gun, and a determination of the degree of their separation is approximately a determination of the distance of the mark from the muzzle of the weapon. In suicide or accidental discharges of a shot-gun the muzzle is so near the body that the charge of shot acts very much as would a single bullet of the size of the bore of the gun, and near wounds thus inflicted, while necessarily large, have about them a minimum laceration and disturbance of tissue, so that perhaps only by their size could one say, viewing the wound alone, that the weapon used had been a shot-gun. On the other hand, at a distance of a few feet the shot begin to separate to such an extent that there is much more laceration of tissue, and after separation to an indeterminate, because variable, number of feet we get such marks as individual shot may make. This distance is indeterminate because it is predicated on the size of the gun, the dimensions of shot, and the weight of the charge of powder. The writer, for instance, has recently seen one case where the muzzle of the gun could not have been more than two feet away from the surface of the foot at which it was discharged, the consequence being a round and very slightly ragged hole through the mid-tarsal region from dorsum to sole.

It is possible for a single grain of shot to produce death. Such a case is related by Ollivier d’Angers: a thief scaling a wall received at a distance of fifteen paces a charge of shot from a fowling-piece; he fell dead immediately. The charge had struck him in the breast, centring over a space of three or four inches, but one shot had penetrated the aorta over the attachment of the sigmoid valves, and another had traversed the entire wall of this vessel.

Powder-Marks.—A very important part of evidence in case of near wounds of gunshot character pertains to the powder-marks upon the clothing and skin. Naturally every one knows that when a weapon is discharged near a given surface there will be more or less powder-marking upon that surface, the same being due to particles of gunpowder which are incompletely or not at all consumed, and which are black because of the charcoal they contain; but the circumstances under which powder-marks of a given character can be inflicted are so extremely variable that no statistics or information of value in a general way can be given. Thus the fineness of the marks will depend upon the fineness of the powder, and the area covered and the depth of the marking upon the same, upon the distance of the muzzle from the surface; and the only way to make out the exact distance of the muzzle from the surface at the time of the infliction of a given wound is to use the same weapon, if possible, with cartridges or charges out of the same lot as that used at the time of injury. Distances could, perhaps, be stated in round numbers, but their value would only be remotely approximate, and in a given case the best evidence is to be obtained by experiment with the fire-arm in question.

Dimensions of Perforations.—At different times a great deal of weight has been attached to the dimension of the perforation through such objects as wood, glass, or even through the bones of the body, made by the bullet which is supposed or known to have destroyed life. Wrong inferences have been drawn sometimes from a study of undischarged bullets or cartridges similar, at least before firing, to that which has been taken from a given body. It has been stated, for instance, that such a bullet was too large to have passed through such an aperture or to have made such a hole, or that it was so much smaller than a certain hole that it was not the particular missile which made that perforation. Upon this matter has hinged a great deal of uncertainty and consequently a good deal of study. The size of opening which a bullet of given calibre will make through wood depends upon the distance of the weapon, the firing charge, the velocity of the bullet, the extent to which its shape has been altered by passing through the given barrier, by the heat of the explosion, by the impact of the air upon the heated and consequently softened metal, and by the density and thickness of the wood, as well as by the resistance which it may have offered mainly from its being fixed in place or movable. There is, however, ordinarily less question about the size of a similar hole through a piece of glass or bone. It is generally supposed that a bullet passing through a window-pane will shatter it. This depends, however, mainly upon the perfection of fixation of the glass in its resting-place. If for purposes of experiment panes of glass be tacked into a shutter and bullets be fired at them from varying distances, they will be practically invariably shattered. It is, however, quite different if the pane of glass be firmly fixed in a frame by means of putty which has become old and hard, and especially if the window-frame itself be closely fitted in the casing. Under these circumstances a bullet will often make a clearly punched hole, or one with very few radiating lines of fracture. Experiment, therefore, to secure evidence should be made under circumstances exactly parallel to those which necessitate such evidence.