ATF Tool Mark Examiner John Jacobson Tested 154 Handguns
Waco – The long-awaited ballistics tests of guns found abandoned at the scene of the deadliest biker brawl in history made it into the record on Friday afternoon during a droning, meticulous series of questions and answers that put jurors’ chins in their hands.
John Jacobson testified that in all his years as a gun tester, he never handled an investigation with so many firearms. Of 154 weapons he received from the Waco Police following the Twin Peaks “shoot-out,” he found only 12 that matched the protocol of a consistent match-up from test firings of as many as three rounds from each one.
Working at the agency’s San Francisco Bay Walnut Creek, California, laboratory, he matched each firearm by serial number to see if it has been reported as stolen, compared drag marks, extractor marks, chamber marks and other striations on cartridge cases and land and groove marks on bullets and bullet fragments to see if they are consistent with evidence fired from unknown guns at other crime scenes. In addition, there was a comparison of fingerprints from the national Automatic Fingerprint Identification System.
The process took “a little less than a year,” according to his testimony.
None of the firearms so identified were attributed to any particular person – and certainly to no defendant indicted for the crime of engaging in organized criminal activity in the massive prosecution of 154 out of 177 total arrested on May 17, 2015.
After identifying each of the exhibits by their investigation numbers assigned by the Waco police, the DPS, the ATF and the lab, he continued to testify that the photos entered into evidence were a true and correct representation of the exhibit, his signature and the data he entered on his reports.
At the end of this long series of questions and answers, he was asked “Do you see Exhibit Number ________?” by lead prosecutor Michael Jarrett, and he answered yes. He was then asked if it was a true and accurate representation, if that was his signature, and did he have an opinion about the item pictured. He then stated simply that it was the one he examined, and that it was recovered and collected at Twin Peaks according to the chain of custody. In the cases of ballistics matches, he said it was fired by the weapon so inspected. This took nearly as long as his initial testimony.
Bullets and bullet fragments found in the bodies of the deceased and wounded were tested by the lab at Southwest Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas. That testimony will be presented separately, at a later date.
When it was said and done, they hadn’t told us a thing about how all this relates to the accusations stated in the indictment against Christopher Jacob Carrizal, who rode at the head of a column of Bandidos from Dallas on that fateful day.
When it was said and done, they hadn’t told us a thing.
I have spoken.
I am sincere.
- The Legendary