Bx. judge’s ruling could upend bullet forensics
Man dies days after being shot in face
A Bronx judge says there is a “significant flaw” in the forensic method police use to link bullets to guns — a ruling that led to one suspect’s acquittal and could impact scores of pending and future gun cases, say criminal defense lawyers.
Cops are skeptical — they say the written opinion by Bronx Supreme Court Judge April Newbauer is an “outlier” that goes against thousands of other court rulings.
But Terri Rosenblatt, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, said the ruling will help her group challenge evidence in countless gun cases.
Newbauer’s ruling challenges a kind of scientific evidence familiar to everyone who watches TV cop shows, which often feature scenes where forensic scientists compare two bullets under a microscope.
By comparing toolmarks — tiny marks on bullets — the TV scientists say they can be sure a bullet used in a crime came from a particular gun.
Just as on TV, toolmark identification is accepted in law enforcement circles. But defense lawyers have called it junk science that can lead to wrongful convictions.
Newbauer’s June 30 ruling in the case of two people charged in a January gun incident sided with those who question the science. “Forensic toolmark practice lacks adequate scientific underpinning and the confidence of the scientific community as whole,” the judge wrote.
Newbauer’s ruling came in the case of a Jan. 2018 incident in which two people were charged with gun possession after shots were fired in the Bronx. A gun was found inside the car, and shell casings were found outside the car.
The car’s owner and driver, Michael Ross, 32, and a 23-year-old female passenger in the car — identified in court papers by the initials A.M. — were both charged with gun possession.
Ross, 32, was linked to the shooting by a witness and by DNA evidence, and was convicted of gun possession. But the judge disputed that the bullet evidence also implicted A.M.
“For too long, police and prosecutors have used this deeply flawed forensic method against New Yorkers despite the risk of wrongful convictions,” said Kyla Wells, a Legal Aid lawyer who represented A.M. in the case.
A man shot in the face during a drive-by shooting in Brooklyn died of his wounds days later, police said Thursday.
Malik Williams, 21, was behind the wheel of a car on Shore Parkway near Haring St. in Sheepshead Bay about 12:40 a.m. Sunday when someone in a passing vehicle opened fire and shot him in the face.
Medics rushed Williams, of Canarsie, to Coney Island Hospital, where he died of his injuries on Wednesday.
The car and gunman sped off onto the Belt Parkway, witnesses told police.
It was not immediately clear why Williams was targeted.
No arrests have been made.