3.William Newhouse — Direct/Cross/Redirect/Recross

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Well, I have to back up to 1972. I accepted a position with the California Department of Justice in August of 1972, as a -- out there they call us criminalists -- as a trainee, essentially, at that time. I didn't really encounter firearms and toolmark work, which is the work I do here in Wisconsin, until probably the fall of 1974.

I, at that time, went through -- initiated the training courses they had in place in the Sacramento Crime Laboratory that dealt with the firearms and toolmark section and dealt with the kinds of examinations that we were expected to perform in the course of case examinations in the firearm section. I completed that training course successfully.

And January of 1975, then, still in Sacramento, I was asked to take a week long course, again as part of my training, that dealt with the theory of identification and how is it you can say anything about a bullet or a cartridge casing and answer questions about whether they were fired from a particular gun or not.

After I completed that, and I think the next week I was in another course that dealt with ammunition problems. I was then assigned to the firearm section of the Sacramento Laboratory and was responsible, until I left that laboratory, for most of the firearms work that came into that firearms section of the laboratory.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: I moved to the Montana State Crime Laboratory in January of 1981. Took a position there as that State's Firearm and Toolmark Examiner. While I was there in Montana, I had the opportunity to obtain some additional training.

I went to the FBI Academy. It was probably in 1984, approximately. Took a course there. It was a week long course that dealt with specialized techniques in firearms and toolmark identification. We look at special problems that we encounter in the firearms section. And I was there until November of 1988.

At that time I then moved to Kansas City, Missouri Police Department Crime laboratory as a Firearms and Toolmark Examiner, one of four in that laboratory, and was responsible primarily for firearms case work in that laboratory.

The last two years that I was in the firearms section there, before I came to Wisconsin, I was Chief Criminalist of the Firearms Section in which I had supervisorial (sic) duties in addition to the case work duties.

And then in, as I mentioned, in September of 2002, I came from Kansas City up to the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: In the firearms section of most crime laboratories, we're dealing with evidence that's recovered in the course of criminal investigations that involve shootings. So, obviously, what I'm going to be looking at, in most cases, there's going to be a gun.

I'm interested in and have to be able to define how a gun functions, whether it's functioning properly, perhaps whether it's been altered in some cases and, of course, whether or not I can fire the gun safely, or whether or not it was capable of being operated safely in the instant in which -- from which it was recovered.

I'm also asked to look at bullets and cartridge casings. We fire these guns, the bullets, of course, are -- leave the gun, the cartridge casings, depending on the design of the gun, can leave the gun and are recovered at the crime scenes, occasionally recovered at autopsies.

I'm asked to examine those items of evidence, the cartridge casings and bullets. And most often I'm asked to determine, if a gun has been recovered, whether that gun, or that bullet, or that cartridge casing has been fired in a particular weapon. In those instances where I may not have a gun, then the question may be, was this group of cartridge casings all fired in the same gun or do we have more than one gun involved.

The same questions apply to bullets. So, then the next thing I do in that section most frequently is look at bullets and cartridge casings, compare them to test fired bullets and cartridge casings so that I can answer those questions.

The other element of firing the gun involves gunpowder and gunpowder residues. And it's also part of, or one of the duties that I have, to examine clothing; to examine patterns on skin of shooting victims; and answer questions about distance, can I determine, if possible, what distance the shooting victim may have been from the gun when the gun was discharged.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Most of you are probably familiar, if only secondarily through TV, with guns, and know that what you fire in a weapon is a cartridge. You may not be aware of what the different components of a cartridge are, and it's the components, of course, most often, that I'm asked to look at. You are going to hear me talk about some of these parts of a cartridge and how they relate to and connect with different parts of the weapon.

A cartridge is a composition of about four different parts. A cartridge consists of a cartridge casing, and we'll see some of these later, I presume, at least pictures of them. We also have a bullet or a projectile. This is part of a cartridge. And, of course, the bullet is what is aimed at a particular target and what will, if the weapon is working properly and the cartridge works properly, what will strike that target.

Inside of the cartridge, inside the cartridge casing, is gunpowder. Gunpowder is a propellant. It's a chemical that, under the conditions that we expose it to when we're firing the gun, essentially explodes in the gun. And, of course, when it does that, a couple of things happen. It forces the bullet out of the barrel of the weapon and, again, down range from wherever the weapon is pointed.

The last component in a cartridge is what we call a primer. There's a part of the gun that's going to cause the cartridge to fire. That part of the gun actually strikes a different chemical in the gunpowder that's present in the cartridge casing and that is very shock sensitive. It gets struck. It explodes. It ignites the gunpowder and then our cartridge fires and the gun should work as it's intended to.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Really only two places on any cartridge, these days at any rate. We may have a rim fire cartridge, and in this case that's the kind of ammunition that was used. And in the case of a rim fire cartridge, the primer is located around the edge of the head of the cartridge.

And we may also have, in other weapons, a center fire. In that instance, the primer is located in the center of the head or the end of the cartridge.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Well, we have to know where the bullet starts out. Of course, it's in the cartridge. But in the weapon, the cartridge is going to be chambered or located right at the end of the barrel of the weapon.

The muzzle of the weapon is the very front and most portion of that barrel. And at the back of the barrel will be a part of the barrel that's called the chamber. And it's designed to receive a cartridge. When the cartridge is fired, the bullet is projected or is expelled from the cartridge and into the barrel.

If the gun is going to work properly that barrel has to be sealed by the bullet. That is, no gases can escape around the sides of the bullet. And so the bullet, as it comes down the barrel of the gun, is in contact with that inner surface of the barrel. We have, then, the lead surface or the copper jacketed surface of the bullet being scraped by the inside of the barrel of the weapon.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: That's going to be determined by the design of the weapon. Some weapons are designed to keep the cartridge, the fired cartridge casing now, inside the weapon, so that it has to be extracted manually.

In other designs of weapons, allow you to extract the cartridge casings in certain ways. We may have what's called a bolt on a weapon that if you actually pull up and back and that will cause the cartridge casing that's been fired in the weapon to be extracted and rejected from the weapon.

And, finally, there's a design of a weapon that's very common that's called a semi-automatic design. And, in this instance, the cartridge, when it's fired, the weapon is designed to use the gases, the energy that's created by the explosion of that gunpowder in there, to actually drive back a part of the weapon, extract whole that cartridge casing from the chamber and then there will be another part of the weapon that the cartridge casing comes into contact with that causes the cartridge casing to be ejected from the weapon.

And, then, the next step in this kind of weapon is that that same part of the gun that's driven backward and extracts the fired cartridge casing, moves forward again, under spring pressure most of the time, and it pushes the next cartridge that's in the weapon up into the chamber, and at the same time cocks the weapon.

So on a semi-automatic weapon, if you fire a cartridge in that weapon, it ejects -- extracts and ejects the cartridge casing, chambers the next round, cocks the weapon, and now the gun can be fired by a pull of the trigger.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: You have heard me describe, I think, that when a cartridge casing or cartridge is fired in a gun, that we have contact between different parts of the gun and the cartridge casing. And, then, I know I described, specifically, that when the bullet passes through the barrel of the gun that it's in contact with that inner surface of the barrel.

Whenever there is a contact between either the bullet and the cartridge casing with a part of the gun, we have the opportunity for a marking to be transferred to that item. Let's talk, specifically, about the bullet. When that bullet passes through there and is scratched by the inside of the barrel of the weapon, and I look at that surface of the bullet under magnification in the laboratory, what I'm going to see are a series of scratches. We call them stria. They are actually three dimensional engravings, something more than scratches, in most instances, on the surface of the bullet.

When I test fire the gun in the laboratory, I fire it into a water tank and I retrieve the bullets that I fired. I can examine those test fired bullets and demonstrate to myself that I have a pattern of these engravings, of this stria, on that surface of the bullet. And I can compare, test to test, two bullets that I test fired in the weapon and establish that, in fact, when I fire a bullet from that particular weapon there is a pattern I can expect to see on that bullet.

And so now I know, having done that, that when I look at a bullet that I don't know what gun it has been fired from, that if I find that pattern on there, then I have the opportunity to draw a connection between the bullet that's been recovered and submitted to the laboratory and possibly the gun that's been submitted too. And that connection is going to be based on the presence of these patterns of markings.

With the cartridge casing, they have exactly the same thing going on, and of course we have different parts of the gun that are involved. I will talk about two because they were involved in my examination in this case.

I told you that a part of the gun strikes the cartridge and causes it to fire. It's that primer causes an explosion and, of course, the cartridge goes off and the bullet goes away. That firing pin, that piece of metal in the gun that actually strikes the cartridge, has markings on it that were created during the manufacture of that firing pin. And some of those markings can be transferred to the cartridge casing.

Again, I test fired the cartridge casing. I don't know when I test fire the gun what parts of the weapon may be marking the cartridge casings in a way that will allow me to come to any conclusion about it, or whether there will be any marks there. I examine my test fires. I will examine the firing pin impression. And under magnification, I may see a pattern of markings in the firing pin impression.

And, again, if I do, and can demonstrate that that's occurring with that ammunition on every cartridge casing I fire in there, then I know I have something to look for on cartridge casings that have been recovered in the course of an investigation and maybe tie that into that gun. The other part --

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: These relate to the inner surface or the inside of the barrel of the modern gun. When they manufacture that barrel, they put grooves on the inside surface of the barrel.

And, additionally, when they put those grooves into that surface of the barrel, they turn the tool that they are using to put the grooves in there and give it a twist. We call, of course, the grooves of the barrel are the grooves. The term that's applied to the area of the barrel between the grooves, we call lands, or l-a-n-d-s. Don't know where the term came from, but that historically has been the term applied to that area between the grooves in the barrel of the rifle -- or of the weapon.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: I mark or, in some cases, with guns in particular, place a sticker on the weapon with the information that associates it with -- associates it with our case number and the date that I opened the box that it was in and so on.

Additionally, I had also, when it was submitted to the laboratory, I had checked it to make sure it wasn't loaded, and safe to handle and store in the laboratory, before I examined it in the firearms section. I also have a tag on there with that same kind of information on it.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: The procedure, the approach to a weapon examination is really the same on just about any gun that I look at. Initially, I'm concerned about whether the weapon is safe to fire. I know I'm going to want to do that.

I also want to examine the weapon, as I did in this case, and document various features of the weapon that might allow me to identify it later, or that give me some idea of a possible problem with its function if I examine it closely.

Additionally, I'm interested in whether or not there might be, in most cases, some other kind of evidence on the weapon. Just depends on whether it's been examined by someone else or not or whether I'm the first to actually handle it.

So, in this case, the first thing I did was to go through the weapon. It had already been through the DNA section. I didn't need to be concerned about any materials or substances on the exterior of the weapon. And so I just documented serial number, caliber, make, model, length of the barrel, various physical characteristics of the weapon.

One of the other things that I did in my initial examination is to examine the bore of the weapon, to look down the barrel. For two reasons, one, I want to know that it's not obstructed. And the only way to do that is to look down there and make sure there is not a bullet caught up somewhere in the middle of the barrel.

And the other was to look at the condition of the barrel. That gives me some idea of what I might expect to see when I fire it, and in particular what condition the bullet that I recover from test firing it might be.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Well, as I said, I recovered the cartridge casings that I had fired in this weapon. The next step was to compare those to the recovered cartridge casings, those ones that were submitted. And at that moment, or at the point that they were recovered, of course, we didn't know what gun they were fired in.

The examination is a microscopic examination. I'm looking at very, very, tiny markings that are placed, as I described earlier, on the cartridge casings, by the different parts of the gun.

First thing I do is to look at my test fires, to again assess what expectation I can have of finding markings that are placed there by the gun, what they look like, what patterns I will see. Having done that, I would then, using my microscope again, place one of the cartridge casings that we're wondering whether it was fired from the gun, and one of my test fired cartridge casings, on the microscope, and do a direct comparison, under magnification, of those markings that I see on the cartridge casings.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: This is -- has been damaged greatly, no longer looks like a bullet. Of course, having looked at these for 35 years, it does look to me like a bullet that has passed through or has struck some harder object than the bullet.

When I examine it in the laboratory initially, I do a number of things. I weigh the bullet. I look at it under the microscope to determine what kinds of, or if any, rifling characteristics might be present on what remains of this bullet.

I'm also interested in the bullet composition. I want to -- I want to fire a bullet like that from this gun, for comparison, and so I'm interested in whether this is a lead bullet, or whether this is a lead bullet that's coated with copper, and so on. And all of those things were part of what I documented and recorded in the course of my examination of this item, State's Exhibit 276.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: When I did the microscopic examination, it was clear it was a coated bullet and not a lead bullet. It was also clear it was a .22 caliber bullet to me. Additionally, under the microscope, I could see markings that were put there by the rifle, in particular the barrel through which it was fired.

Those lands and grooves that I described earlier, in the bullet, leave what we refer to as land and groove impressions. And in this particular item, Exhibit 276, I could identify under the microscope, eight remaining land and groove impressions on that bullet.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Yes. Most .22 caliber bullets, with the exception of .22 magnums, are actually lead bullets. But many of them are coated with a very fine powder of copper, or possibly a copper alloy, that they actually impress into the surface of the bullet. And that is the kind of bullet that we have here in Exhibit 276.

That's important to me because I know that if I'm going to compare this to the test fired bullets from this gun, I want to shoot the same kind of thing. So I selected, then, for this second set of examinations with the bullets, an ammunition that, in fact, was copper coated.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: I was able -- or it was limited to a class characteristics comparison, a term I haven't used yet. I knew by examining the bullet in Exhibit 276, that it had been fired from a gun manufactured with 16 lands and grooves and a right hand twist. That much information is on the bullet. It's also a .22 caliber bullet.

This weapon is a .22 caliber bullet. And in the barrel of this gun are 16 lands and grooves and a right hand twist. However, I can say no more than that about this bullet. And the fact of the matter is, I cannot specify exactly what gun this bullet was fired in, again, because I don't have those small stria, those scratches on the bullet surface, that I can use for that kind of conclusion.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Again, we have to refer to, or talk about what's present, at high magnification, on the surface of that bullet. And on this bullet I have, in fact, patterns of scratches, or patterns of stria, present on a number of different areas of the bullet, even in the condition it's in, that I could -- could relate to, that I could identify with the same patterns on the test fired bullets.

Furthermore, the patterns that were there, the markings that I see, are patterns that I recognize as being more than could be expected to be seen, more than we would ever see on a bullet that was not fired from the same gun. It has to exceed what I recognize as those -- those set of markings that we expect to see on two bullets not fired from the same gun.

So when I looked at State's Exhibit 277, the pattern I saw there, the quality and quantity of the pattern correlations and matchings that I saw there, was enough for me to come to a conclusion that, in fact, the reason they had the same pattern on this bullet and my test fired bullets, is because it had been fired from the same gun.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: There are -- And, in fact, Mr. Biasotti, in that treatise that you named a moment ago, there are a certain number of stria that have been identified and that we recognize as a number, beyond which, we know we will not see that amount of correlation in a non-match type of comparison.

That's going to require a little explanation probably, but the point of what I'm trying to say is that Mr. Biasotti, in fact, with that paper, was the one who first defined it, that there are and we can talk about minimum criteria of consecutive matching stria or markings and treat that as a threshold, above which we can be sure, statistically, that this is an identification.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: When we're talking about a three dimensional stria comparison, if you look under the microscope, the markings I'm looking at, as I alluded to earlier, I think are not just scratches, they actually have depth. They have width. They have that three dimensional element to it. So we're not just counting lines.

When I'm performing this kind of a comparison, the all important question is, of course, when do I know I have enough for an identification. Mr. Biasotti's research, followed up by any number of other three or four other important papers over the last few years, have defined that minimum criteria. And it's available for examiners to use, if they wish, to rely on it.

In response, what the actual number is, when I'm looking at three dimensional patterns of marks on bullets, or any toolmark for that matter, and we're talking about stria, that if I have two consecutive groups of three marks, or a single run of consecutive markings that number six, or more than that, of course, this is a minimum conservative criteria again, then I can be assured, again, based on these studies that have been published in the AFTE Journal and that all of these researchers have completed, I can be assured that, in fact, that is not possible with two bullets fired from different guns.

When I see that minimum criteria or one more, I can be assured, based solely on that, that those two bullets had to have been fired from the same gun in order to observe that set of matching stria.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: I hope it's clear. From here, to me, it's not real clear, but I will use the pointer. The dividing line, that is, what separates the image of my test faired cartridge casing from one of the cartridge casings in Exhibit 250 here is, really, in the photograph, a discontinuity from the distance you are at.

If you could see it more closely you would see there's a very fine dark line there. On the right side of that line is the image of the test fire, on the left side the image of one of these cartridge casings. The area of interest runs from approximately where the pointer is now up to here.

And, yes, along that line, there is what appears to me, of course, to be a very clear correlation or agreement of detail that was created by the firing pin of the rifle, the Marlin Glenfield 60 rifle.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: The protocol and the approved method that we use for peer review involves my taking those pictures that you saw, some of which you saw up there. I copy them to a location on our server, in our computer network, that is secure, of course, that Reg Templin in Milwaukee has access to. He then -- then I email him, I let him know that, in fact, I have a case there that needs to be reviewed before I can then send a report out, or write the report expressing my opinions.

He reviews those photographs. If he agrees that -- that those photographs that we have been looking at, to him support my opinion that that bullet was fired from that gun, or that the cartridge casing was fired from that gun, he then records, with the computer, that A, he has reviewed it, and B, he has approved it.

And that, then, is the record of the peer review. The initials that you see on the paperwork which are in our file at the laboratory in Madison, of course, reflects the other part of the procedure and it is part of a review process, but different from the peer review of my identifications.

Once or twice a year, it's entirely up to what Reg and I work out, he comes over to Madison, he has to review a certain percentage, approximately 20 percent, of all the cases I have done since he was there last. And this case, the cartridge casing examinations, because I did them first, before he came in April, was one of those case files that he reviewed.

As part of the procedure to prove that he's reviewed the case file, he initials all the paperwork there, all the supporting documentation that I put in the case file. And that's why we see this April 13 date on some of those documents, and that's because he came over in April, but the bullet examination was actually performed in May.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: There has to have been, before this report is allowed out of there, proof to the supervisor that this case has been reviewed, that this report and my conclusions have been reviewed by Reg Templin, or someone else over in the Milwaukee Laboratory, or this report doesn't get out.

The fact that they even saw this report, anybody saw this report is, in fact, proof that Reg saw my photographs, agreed with my conclusions, approved with the review process, acknowledged that those conclusions were correct in his mind, and the report then went out.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Sure. Well, what we have to understand is there's always differences. The test fired bullets, when I compare those, I expect to see differences. You cannot fire two bullets from any gun and expect to see what we have maybe heard referred to as a perfect match. Those simply just don't exist.

What's critical is to be able to understand when the difference you see are, in fact, significant. Do I have to worry about this difference, what I think I described as a cannelure, this set of markings, or this set of depressions that you see vertically over here. Clearly that's a difference, a very obvious difference to everyone.

Does it mean anything? It means absolutely nothing. That's a manufacturer's marking that's put on there, has nothing to do with the gun it was fired in. It's not obliterated by firing it through the barrel of the gun. I don't even care whether it's there or not. Clearly, it plays no role. That's an example of the difference, it plays no role, has no influence whatsoever in my evaluating those markings on the bullet to determine whether it was fired from a gun.

Other differences, differences in the color here, they may have started out the same color. Differences in color don't mean a thing. What I'm interested in, so long as all of the class characteristics are the same, what is absolutely required of me, is that I recognize what markings we do have here that are individual, that have some significance because they relate to the manufacturing process that created the barrel from which this bullet was fired. I have to know that they are individual, individual or unique, to that particular barrel. That's not an issue in this case either.

The other element of this is related to markings that, from where you are sitting I suspect you can't see, I know I can't see them clearly from here. They are in this area right here. And this is the only place in this photograph where I have individual detail that I'm trying to take a picture of to show you the kind of thing I'm seeing under the microscope. This isn't everything I saw under the microscope. This is just an example of what I saw.

And I will tell you that in Groove Impression No. 1, that we have some correlation. We have some matching of stria in this location. And, in fact, in this location, however, there is not enough stria there for an identification. If this is all I had on this bullet, I would have had the same conclusion I had with the other bullet here, because that wouldn't be enough. Of course, it isn't all I had.

With regard to this photograph, though, the usefulness of this area that I have labeled DI No. 1, was that it gave me a reference point. I have got all this stuff you see on these bullets. I need to be comparing different parts of the bullets -- of one bullet to different parts of the other bullet. It's kind of nice to have a place to start.

And there are a pair of stria there that I had observed on my test fires, that when I got done looking at my test fires, I knew I was going to look for those on the bullet and, frankly, see if I got lucky. And they were on the bullet that was recovered in Exhibit 277. And the fact of the matter is, they were there. That's what this photograph exhibits.

This is part of the process, but it is not the whole process. And this isn't everything that lead me to the conclusion that this bullet here was fired from that Marlin rifle.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: When I'm trying to determine whether a bullet was fired from a gun, it all starts with understanding what the manufacturer is doing to produce that barrel. There are, unquestionably, methods of creating barrels, putting grooves in barrels, that will produce markings that reproduce from barrel to barrel. And, clearly, if you can't recognize it, I can't recognize those when I'm looking at bullets, then there's no way I can come to any conclusions about that.

Any firearms examiner has to bring to the examination an understanding of how that gun barrel was made and what creates these markings we see on the bullets. With Marlin, I can tell you exactly how they made that barrel. And because I know what they did, what machining processes they did, or applied to that barrel to create the grooves in the barrel, I also know that the defects, those microscopic defects that were left in the barrel, after that process was done, are going to create these markings on the bullet and they are going to be unique to that barrel.

So that's the first step in the process. And I say, looking at and having this gun in front of me, that what I'm looking at that's going to be created by the barrel of the gun, is that unique to that gun. In this case I can.

The next step, and the other thing that requires experience and training in the knowledge that a firearm examiner brings to an examination, is an awareness that when we have those markings, you know, I may have 150 of these tiny little scratches and stria scattered around the surface of a bullet. And, clearly, some of them are going to line up. We expect that randomly, if I have two bullets that have been fired from separate guns, obviously, some of these are going to line up. So there's got to be more than just finding lines that line up.

And there is, of course. I have to be aware of, part of my background has to have looked at hundreds, or probably thousands by now, of non-matched situations where I'm looking at bullets that I know were not fired from the same gun, trying to force a match, but recognizing what's the -- what kind of agreement am I going to see in a non-matched situation. And then demanding that when I look at something like this, that I have more than that, to come to an identification. That is also critical for a firearms and toolmark examiner.

And, finally, we talked about consecutive matching stria a little bit. I didn't get into it in a lot of detail. When we look at our matching lines, there's a number of different ways to evaluate them. I think counsel brought up, from I think Mr. Biasotti's paper, that we might find as much as 38 percent lines matching on a comparison and -- on two bullets that we know were fired from the same gun.

Is that significant? Can I look at two bullets, count all the lines and see if I've got 38 percent, and if I have 40 percent say, oh, those were fired from the same gun. Not at all. The percent matching is not a good criteria for judging whether a bullet was fired from the same gun. We don't use that.

What we have found, because -- and Mr. Biasotti's study that counsel quoted over there, started this all up back in 1959. What we have been able to define and quantify -- I can provide some numbers for you if you like -- is what about matching lines is significant to the examiner when he is trying to make that conclusion.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: I want a bullet that has not been damaged. I want a bullet on which the only markings I see were created by the barrel of the gun from which I fired it.

And to accomplish that in the laboratory, I fire it into water. I have this big old 9 foot X 2 1/2 foot X 4 foot deep water tank and a port on one end of it. And I fire the bullet into the water. If the water is sufficient to slow it down, it drops to the bottom and then I recover it, from the bottom of the tank. And I know, then, that I have a bullet that's only been marked by the barrel of the gun.

WILLIAM NEWHOUSE: Almost any bullet I have ever seen recovered from a criminal investigation has struck something. It has struck a shooting victim, it's struck a wall, it's passed through a wall, whatever the case may be. And as you can imagine, this is a lead bullet, even a copper jacketed bullet, they get damaged, broken up into pieces.

The kind of damage we saw on that bullet is just very, very common. And so, I'm not concerned about those kinds of differences. They don't matter. What I'm concerned about is whether this detail, this individual characteristics, these stria, have they been obliterated or not by its passage through a wall, or by it's having struck a shooting victim. And, of course, I determine that by examination under the microscope.