“Do you know that the Spear and the Sauer guns both make a left twist marking?”
Proctor didn’t know. He had never seen either kind of gun, never heard of them before. Both are German makes, it appears, and occasionally one of them bobs up in a pawnshop.
Although this witness had said he had been a gun expert in a hundred cases, he was unable to take a Colt automatic revolver apart in court. Proctor struggled with it vainly until his face grew crimson, dropped it on the floor in his awkwardness, and then the court suggested that some one else try. Another expert took the weapon apart in a moment.
“And what is the part of the gun through which the firing pin protrudes,” asked Attorney McAnarney.
“I do not know as I can tell you all the scientific parts of the gun,” answered Proctor.
Proctor said he received the Colt pistol and some 32-calibre cartridges from another officer at Brockton police station.
Q. Will you look at this envelope of cartridges and see if you can identify them?
A. That is the same envelope, and it looks like the same amount of cartridges. I can tell by counting them.
Neither revolver nor the bullets were ever impounded before the trial. They were in the hands of police officers, and most of the time in Captain Proctor’s possession. Prosecutor Katzmann refused to permit the defense to examine any of the exhibits until they were produced in court.
To meet the testimony of Proctor and Van Amburgh, the defense put on two gun experts of long standing—James E. Burns, noted rifleman, champion pistol shot, and head of a department of the United States Cartridge Company; and James H. Fitzgerald, superintendent of the testing department of the Colt Automatic Pistol Company. Burns declared that Bullet No. 3 might have been fired from either a Colt or a Bayard revolver. The latter is a Belgian gun; many have been brought here since the war. Burns declared positively that the bullet did not come from Sacco’s revolver. He fired 8 bullets through it, and all came through clean and without any markings.