The court moved through three witnesses this morning, including two evidence technicians and the Deputy who executed the Jacksonville arrest warrant on Michael Dunn at his residence the day after the shooting.
Before the trial proper started there was apparently an evidentiary issue that needed to be addressed. There existed a forensics photo that had a portion highlighted. Unfortunately, it was the wrong portion, so a second version was made. In confusion the first photo was admitted into evidence. It only took two highly educated lawyers and a presumably similarly well-educated judge 15 or 20 minutes to figure out how to resolve this difficult. They did manage to do so, however, in a cooperative spirit.
State Attorney Angela Corey would take the lead on the two evidence technicians, before turning things over to Assistant State Attorney Erin Wolfson for direct of the Deputy.
Ron Davis, father of Jordan Davis, was again present in the courtroom.
The first State’s witness was Detective Andrew Kipple, the senior evidence technician involved in processing the crime scene and evidence.. His testimony would consume the large majority of the morning.
Corey hit early on a point that had caught many an eye in prior testimony–the fact that the investigators notes taken contemporaneously at the scene had been destroyed. In questioning Kipple it was made clear that after an officer’s notes are incorporated into an official report, those original notes are destroyed as standard operating procedure. This appears to be common practice in many departments, and a retired Federal law enforcement officer contacted me offline and confirmed that similar procedures were followed in his agency.
Kipple was the lead evidence technician called to process the scene, and much of his testimony consisted of identifying, and to some degree analyzing, photographs he’d taken at the scene and alter at the crime scene technician’s warehouse. It was at the warehouse were dowels were used to define the trajectory of the bullets that struck the SUV.
Corey also touched upon the issue of the child-safety locks, discussed yesterday. Kipple indicated that he had no idea of the locks were activated or not, and that such an issue would normally have been left to the homicide detectives.
Corey spent a considerable time on Kipple’s interior photographs of the Durango, which Kipple searched extensively. Repeatedly asked by Corey if he had found any weapon or anything that might have had an appearance of a weapon, Kipple consistently responded in the negative.
The more interesting of Kipple’s testimony involves the bullet strikes on the vehicle and the dowel work he did back at the crime scene tech warehouse. (Note that the bullet strikes are numbered for evidentiary purposes, progressing from the rear of the car forward. These numbers have no significance in terms of the order in which the bullets struck the vehicle.)
Corey was particularly interested in this bullet, because it’s trajectory carried it from the right-rear corner of the vehicle, traversed the entire SUV, and ended striking the driver’s side visor and window on left-front of vehicle, all at “head-height”. This will be strong basis for the three attempted murder charges.
Closeups of these impacts show them very slightly oblong, consist with a drive in an adjacent car shooting slightly backwards.
This was affirmed with later trajectory dowel work. From this photo, taken from perspective of Leland Brunson’s seat, it’s not hard to see how Jordan Davis was struck in each leg and once half-way up in side of body.
I expect that these were the first three rounds fired by Dunn, and the ones that took Jordan Davis’ life.
These bullet strikes are substantially oblong, suggesting they were fired when the SUV was substantially further rearward of the shooter.
OK, that’s it for the mid-day, as I’m out of time. Back to live coverage of the trial:
LIVE COVERAGE: “Loud Music” Murder Trial, Day 3
–Andrew, @LawSelfDefense
Andrew F. Branca is an MA lawyer and the author of the seminal book “The Law of Self Defense, 2nd Edition,” available at the Law of Self Defense blog, Amazon.com (paperback and Kindle), Barnes & Noble (paperback and Nook), and elsewhere.
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