Ms. Sagor said she drove Mr. Muhammad one evening to a nearby gunsmith, one of many backyard ballistics experts in the hills in northern Washington.
Last week, detectives determined that the rifle, a Bushmaster.223-caliber weapon linked by ballistics to many of the attacks, was in a gun dealer's inventory when the golfer was shot, said Sgt. Marco Borboa of the Tucson Police Department.
Instead, the prosecution paraded a motley lineup of shaky eyewitnesses, most of them pressured or threatened; befuddled the jury with ambiguous ballistics reports; browbeat the many Italian witnesses who vouched for the whereabouts of the defendants on the day of the murders; and, not least, relied on the astounding incompetence of Sacco and Vanzetti's idealistic but badly overmatched lawyer.
DNA technology was limited, so police had to rely on basics like witness testimony and ballistics evidence, and although DNA obtained at many of the crime scenes was run against CODIS the FBI's national databank it didn't strike a match.
The results of ballistics tests were not immediately available, and it was unclear how many shots were fired or how many times Mr. Trent was hit, the police said.
Using light ballistics, large calibre weapons and even tactical nuclear warheads, many Terran units are reminiscent of present-day designs.
'Ballistic gelatin' is typically used in the ballistics industry.
Many crime labs facing hundreds of backlogged DNA cases have even more shelved fingerprint, serology, ballistics and drug evidence that needs to be tested.
Vyacheslav Stepanov, 54, a ballistics expert and director of a military laboratory here, acknowledged that there were many problems at Chelyabinsk-70, including the fact that few young scientists were clamoring to work there.
Many of the victims were found along a corridor in South L.A., and prosecutors contend that a combination of DNA and ballistics evidence links Franklin to the crimes.
