carrying reloads

[Liberty]

This is Texas, We have our castle doctrine, we have Texas Laws. Texas Judges. and Texas Juries. For the most part any defensive shoot doesn't even get past the grand jury. There hasn't been one case that anyone has been able to document where ammo choice played into a courts decision in a homicide case. I suppose if one uses super duper special reloads that blow up and injure a bystander some civil actions could result, but that isn't what we are talking about.

[Excaliber]

This is Texas, We have our castle doctrine, we have Texas Laws. Texas Judges. and Texas Juries. For the most part any defensive shoot doesn't even get past the grand jury. There hasn't been one case that anyone has been able to document where ammo choice played into a courts decision in a homicide case. I suppose if one uses super duper special reloads that blow up and injure a bystander some civil actions could result, but that isn't what we are talking about.

I wouldn't be concerned about the fact that the ammo was a reload. I agree that in Texas that would not be likely to be an issue.

My concern would be the ability of a forensic examiner to reproduce the gun shot residue pattern at a distance that coincides with my testimony. Getting different results could introduce doubt in the minds of grand jurors that otherwise wouldn't be there and may have an influence on their decision (in combination with the other facts of the case).

This may never come into play at all, but under the theory that it's nice to have all bases covered as well as possible on the preparation side, my own choice is to carry only factory ammo for defense.

[Jeremae]

I carry my own reloads.... my choice

I bought 500 Starline nickelplated brass...

I buy 500 premium bullets (hornady xtp) in 1 lot.

I buy 1000 primers in 1 lot.

I load all 500 rounds in 1 loading session using the same powder.

I check powder throw and cartridge overall length at 5 times the frequency I do with normal ammo.

I shoot 300 of the 500 in a test session, I try to chrono 1 round per magazine (1 out of 8).

My notes from my current carry batch shows less that 5 feet per second varience across 32 rounds(895 ft/sec +- 2.2). My saved test targets show less that a 1 inch group at 20 yards when shot using a rest. and 5 touching holes when shot at 10 yards off a rest.

Unless I shoot all the 41 rounds I usually carry with me they should be able to get consistant forensic patterns from the remaining ammo in my mags/gun. My defense att. will of course have access to the remaining rounds from my batch and all the chrono results and and test targets.

I have had factory ammo go click instead of boom. I trust my own loads more.

[Excaliber]

I carry my own reloads.... my choice

I bought 500 Starline nickelplated brass...

I buy 500 premium bullets (hornady xtp) in 1 lot.

I buy 1000 primers in 1 lot.

I load all 500 rounds in 1 loading session using the same powder.

I check powder throw and cartridge overall length at 5 times the frequency I do with normal ammo.

I shoot 300 of the 500 in a test session, I try to chrono 1 round per magazine (1 out of 8).

My notes from my current carry batch shows less that 5 feet per second varience across 32 rounds(895 ft/sec +- 2.2). My saved test targets show less that a 1 inch group at 20 yards when shot using a rest. and 5 touching holes when shot at 10 yards off a rest.

Unless I shoot all the 41 rounds I usually carry with me they should be able to get consistant forensic patterns from the remaining ammo in my mags/gun. My defense att. will of course have access to the remaining rounds from my batch and all the chrono results and and test targets.

I have had factory ammo go click instead of boom. I trust my own loads more.

Few folks approach this with the degree of organization you have.

It sounds like you have the forensic angle covered.

Trouble comes when you have rounds from different lots that give differing results.

[Jeremae]

Good ammo is consistant ammo....

Since this is carry ammo that I am depending upon to defend my life, I go to extremes to insure it goes bang EVERY time I pull the trigger and every bullet has as close to the same ballistics as possible. The first time I loaded a carry batch, I even wieghed and calipered every bullet and case but since my target ammo chronos with only a slightly higher fps varience (+- 2.4 fps) using range pickup brass and much less expensive bullets, I forego that now.

Interestingly, WWB and UMC bulk ammo actually have a greater variance in speed (about +-8.5 fps) than my target reloads that cost me less than 1/2 to produce.

I only wish I shot well enough to actually get the performance my gun and ammo is capable of.

I never really considered the forensics aspect before, I just keep complete records because that was what I was taught back as a teenager.

[WildBill]

Carefully reloaded ammunition is just as accurate and consistent and dependable as factory loads.

[AggieC05]

all this talk makes me really want to spend a weekend with the grandfather and try to make up some handloads for my little 9mm

[Henry Dearborn]

Spend the $20 or $30 every couple of years and don't worry about it. In the grand scheme of things that amount of money isn't worth worrying about.

It's like guys that will buy an $800 rifle and then buy a $40 scope. I never understood that. You have a license you bought, a class you took, a pistol, magazines, holster and belt. You shoot regularly and maybe pay a fee to do that.....You spend time on an internet forum dedicated to CHL topics.... You probably have even modified the way you dress a little and you're worried about $50 in ammo every other year? What's wrong with this picture?

[bdickens]

It's like guys that will buy an $800 rifle and then buy a $40 scope. I never understood that. You have a license you bought, a class you took, a pistol, magazines, holster and belt. You shoot regularly and maybe pay a fee to do that.....You spend time on an internet forum dedicated to CHL topics.... You probably have even modified the way you dress a little and you're worried about $50 in ammo every other year? What's wrong with this picture?

Or people who buy a $50,000 - $100,00 car and go to IffyLube [sic.] for the $20 oil change.

[Jumping Frog]

The situation Mas Ayoob wrote about was a case in which a husband claimed his wife committed suicide using his handgun with handloaded self defense rounds. . . .

I haven't read Ayoob's article, but is this an instance of a person getting convicted because he used handloads, or because he killed his wife?

This is Texas, We have our castle doctrine, we have Texas Laws. Texas Judges. and Texas Juries. For the most part any defensive shoot doesn't even get past the grand jury. There hasn't been one case that anyone has been able to document where ammo choice played into a courts decision in a homicide case. I suppose if one uses super duper special reloads that blow up and injure a bystander some civil actions could result, but that isn't what we are talking about.

This is the NJ v. Danny Bias case.

The issue was not whether the shooting was a justified self defense shooting, the issue was whether it was suicide or homicide.

Massad Ayoob posted in a long message thread on THR on December 28, 2005.

Found here: http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/inde ... 72213.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NJ V. Bias

This is the classic case of gunshot residue (GSR) evidence being complicated by the use of handloaded ammunition, resulting in a case being misinterpreted in a tragic and unjust way. On the night of 2/26/89, Danny Bias entered the master bedroom of his home to find his wife Lise holding the family home defense revolver, a 6” S&W 686, to her head. He told police that knowing that she had a history of suicidal ideation, he attempted to grab the gun, which discharged, killing her. The gun was loaded with four handloaded lead SWC cartridges headstamped Federal .38 Special +P.

Autopsy showed no GSR. The medical examiner determined that Lise Bias had a reach of 30”, and the NJSP Crime Lab in Trenton determined that the gun in question would deposit GSR to a distance of 50” or more with either factory Federal 158 grain SWC +P .38 Special, or handloads taken from his home under warrant for testing after Danny told them about the reloads. However, the reloads that were taken and tested had Remington-Peters headstamps on the casings and were obviously not from the same batch.

Danny had loaded 50 rounds into the Federal cases of 2.3, 2.6, and 2.9 grains of Bullseye, with Winchester primers, under an unusually light 115 grain SWC that he had cast himself, seeking a very light load that his recoil sensitive wife could handle. The gun had been loaded at random from that box of 50 and there was no way of knowing which of the three recipes was in the chamber from which the fatal bullet was launched.

We duplicated that load, and determined that with all of them and particularly the 2.3 grain load, GSR distribution was so light that it could not be reliably gathered or recovered, from distances as short as 24”. Unfortunately, the remaining rounds in the gun could not be disassembled for testing as they were the property of the court, and there is no forensic artifact that can determine the exact powder charge that was fired from a given spent cartridge.

According to an attorney who represented him later, police originally believed the death to be a suicide. However, the forensic evidence testing indicated that was not possible, and it was listed as suspicious death. Based largely on the GSR evidence, as they perceived it, the Warren County prosecutor’s office presented the case to the grand jury, which indicted Danny Bias for Murder in the First Degree in the death of his wife.

Attorney John Lanza represented Danny very effectively at his first trial, which ended in a hung jury. Legal fees exceeded $100,000, bankrupting Danny; Attorney Lanza, who believed then and now in his client’s innocence, swallowed some $90,000 worth of legal work for which he was never paid.

For his second trial, Bias was assigned attorney Elisabeth Smith by the Public Defender’s office. Challenging the quality of evidence collection, she was able to weaken the prosecution’s allegation that the GSR factor equaled murder, but because the GSR issue was so muddled by the handloaded ammo factor, she could not present concrete evidence that the circumstances were consistent with suicide, and the second trial ended with a hung jury in 1992. At this point, the prosecution having twice failed to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, the judge threw out the murder charge.

It was after this that I personally lost track of the case. However, I’ve learned this past week that the case of NJ v. Daniel Bias was tried a third time in the mid-1990s, resulting in his being acquitted of Aggravated Manslaughter but convicted of Reckless Manslaughter. The appellate division of the Public Defender’s office handled his post-conviction relief and won him a fourth trial. The fourth trial, more than a decade after the shooting, ended with Danny Bias again convicted of Reckless Manslaughter. By now, the state had changed its theory and was suggesting that Danny had pointed the gun at her head to frighten her, thinking one of the two empty chambers would come up under the firing pin, but instead discharging the gun. Danny Bias was sentenced to six years in the penitentiary, and served three before being paroled. He remains a convicted felon who cannot own a firearm.

It is interesting to hear the advice of the attorneys who actually tried this case. John Lanza wrote, “When a hand load is used in an incident which becomes the subject of a civil or criminal trial, the duplication of that hand load poses a significant problem for both the plaintiff or the prosecutor and the defendant. Once used, there is no way, with certainty, to determine the amount of powder or propellant used for that load. This becomes significant when forensic testing is used in an effort to duplicate the shot and the resulting evidence on the victim or target.”

He adds, “With the commercial load, one would be in a better position to argue the uniformity between the loads used for testing and the subject load. With a hand load, you have no such uniformity. Also, the prosecution may utilize either standard loads or a different hand load in its testing. The result would be distorted and could be prejudicial to the defendant. Whether or not the judge would allow such a scientific test to be used at trial, is another issue, which, if allowed, would be devastating for the defense. From a strictly forensic standpoint, I would not recommend the use of hand loads because of the inherent lack of uniformity and the risk of unreliable test results. Once the jury hears the proof of an otherwise unreliable test, it can be very difficult to ‘unring the bell.’”

Ms. Smith had this to say, after defending Danny Bias through his last three trials. I asked her, “Is it safe to say that factory ammunition, with consistently replicable gunshot residue characteristics, (would) have proven that the gun was within reach of Lise’s head in her own hand, and kept the case from escalating as it did?”

She replied, “You’re certainly right about that. Gunshot residue was absolutely the focus of the first trial. The prosecution kept going back to the statement, “It couldn’t have happened the way he said it did’.”

The records on the Bias trials should be available through:
The Superior Court of New Jersey
Warren County
313 Second Street
PO Box 900
Belvedere, NJ 07823

Those who wish to follow the appellate track of this case will find it in the Atlantic Reporter.

142 N.J. 572, 667 A.2d 190 (Table)

Supreme Court of New Jersey
State
v.
Daniel N. Bias
NOS. C-188 SEPT.TERM 1995, 40,813
Oct 03, 1995
Disposition: Cross-pet. Denied.
N.J. 1995.
State v. Bias
142 N>J> 572, 667 A.2d 190 (Table)

He also discusses Iowa v. Cpl. Randy Willems, TN v. Barnes, and NH v. Kennedy as cases where handloads played a role at trial. (These are worth following the THR link to read.)

Massad Ayoob also published "Handloads For Self-Defense: The Daniel Bias Case" in the May/Jun 2006 issue of American Handgunner magazine and a different article in Combat Handguns on the same subject.