PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The ruling caps a decades-long journey Pursley undertook to prove his innocence after spending 23 years in prison. He represented himself from prison for years and lobbied Illinois lawmakers to pass a law allowing the ballistics in his case to be retested using technology not available when he was convicted. The Integrated Ballistic Identification System, or IBIS, uses much higher-resolution and multi-dimensional images for ballistics analysis and ultimately matches shell casings to guns."
STORY: "Ballistics tests prove Illinois man innocent in murder case," by Associated Press reporter Ivan Moreno, published by The Toronto Star on January 16, 2019.
PHOTO CAPTION: "In this April 27, 2017 photo, Patrick Pursley, right, speaks to the media, as Robert Stauffer, one of his lawyers, listens after Pursley was released.
PASSAGE OF THE DAY; "So far, IBIS has been primarily used by law enforcement nationwide to catch and convict criminals, not to prove their innocence. That’s because Illinois remains the only state in the country that allows defendants in post-conviction appeals to use the system to retest ballistics. Without the technology, matching bullets to firearms requires an expert to manually compare shell casings from a crime scene to shell casings test-fired from a gun using microscopes that, at the time of Pursley’s first trial, weren’t as strong as those available now. The processes for ballistics analysis used then were thought to be infallible but have since come under greater scientific scrutiny. When the evidence in Pursley’s case was retested with IBIS, it showed that the scratches and dents on bullets and shell casings from the crime scene didn’t match the gun that prosecutors presented at trial as the murder weapon."
GIST: "An
Illinois judge acquitted a man of murder Wednesday, more than two
decades after jurors convicted him by relying on ballistics that proved
to be wrong. Supporters of 53-year-old Patrick Pursley clapped in a
Winnebago County courtroom when Judge Joseph McGraw issued his ruling,
saying prosecutors had scant evidence to prove Pursley’s guilt in the
fatal shooting of 22-year-old Andy Ascher during a robbery in Rockford,
Illinois in 1993. The
ruling caps a decades-long journey Pursley undertook to prove his
innocence after spending 23 years in prison. He represented himself from
prison for years and lobbied Illinois lawmakers to pass a law allowing
the ballistics in his case to be retested using technology not available
when he was convicted. The Integrated Ballistic Identification System,
or IBIS, uses much higher-resolution and multi-dimensional images for
ballistics analysis and ultimately matches shell casings to guns. “Basically
the whole experience was numbing,” Pursley said after the verdict. “I
was confident. All the signs were there that the judge would see the
evidence for what it was. I’m just grateful that he did.” So far,
IBIS has been primarily used by law enforcement nationwide to catch and
convict criminals, not to prove their innocence. That’s because Illinois
remains the only state in the country that allows defendants in
post-conviction appeals to use the system to retest ballistics. Without
the technology, matching bullets to firearms requires an expert to
manually compare shell casings from a crime scene to shell casings
test-fired from a gun using microscopes that, at the time of Pursley’s
first trial, weren’t as strong as those available now. The processes for
ballistics analysis used then were thought to be infallible but have
since come under greater scientific scrutiny. When the evidence in
Pursley’s case was retested with IBIS, it showed that the scratches and
dents on bullets and shell casings from the crime scene didn’t match
the gun that prosecutors presented at trial as the murder weapon. In
March 2017, McGraw ordered Pursley retried on a first-degree murder
charge and allowed him to go free on bail. Pursley opted to have McGraw decide his fate at his new trial instead of a jury. “In
this case, the court found that the evidence presented by the State at
the retrial did not rise to the level of proof beyond a reasonable
doubt,” Winnebago County State’s Attorney Marilyn Hite Ross said in a
statement. “We respect the court’s decision.” Prosecutors had
maintained that Pursley killed Ascher while he sat in a car with his
girlfriend. But the gun and shell casings were the only physical
evidence prosecutors used to convict Pursley. Pursley’s girlfriend at
the time of the killing implicated him in the crime but later recanted,
saying her testimony had been coerced by police. Prosecutors also relied
on testimony from a man who received a Crime Stoppers reward for
telling police that Pursley had confessed to the crime. “I really don’t have anything say,” said Ascher’s mother, Lois Ascher, in a phone call. “But thank you anyway.” The
centerpiece of the prosecution’s case was the conclusion from their
ballistics expert who testified with absolute certainty during the 1994
trial that the bullets that killed Ascher could only have come from the
gun authorities connected to Pursley. Although his confidence in the
language he used then has waned, he still insisted during the latest
trial that his initial findings were correct. But
defence attorneys had two experts who independently concluded that the
gun taken from Pursley’s home and presented as evidence was not the
firearm used to kill Ascher. “To get to this place it took a
tremendous amount of time, work, and commitment that started with
Patrick,” said Andrew Vail, one of the attorneys from Chicago-based
Jenner and Block, which represented Pursley for free, along with
Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions.""
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/us/2019/01/16/ballistics-tests-prove-illinois-man-innocent-in-murder-case.html
