Critical ballistic information reflecting Mr. Peltier's innocence was withheld from the defense team, making a fair trial impossible. Specifically, at the trial, the FBI ballistic expert, Evan Hodge, testified that he had been unable to perform the best test, a firing pin test, on certain casings found near the agents' car, because the rifle in question had been damaged in a fire. Instead, he stated that he had conducted an extractor mark test, and found the casing and weapon to match.
Years later, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed that in October 1975 a firing pin ballistic test had indeed been performed on the rifle and that the results were clearly negative. In short, the fatal bullet did not come from Leonard Peltier's weapon. The jury never heard about any of these crucial issues.
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Um, no.
Since I actually bothered to look this up, I’m going to post it, however boring it is.
There was a Oct 2, 1975 Lab Report that read in part:
RECOVERED .223 CALIBER COLT RIFLE RECEIVED FROM SA BATF, CONTAINS DIFFERENT FIRING PIN THAN THAT IN RIFLE USED AT RESMURS (reservation murder-Aimless) SCENE
However that was an initial report, not the final report. What happened is initially a tech started going through the ammunition collected as evidence basically in the order in which it was tagged in, not in any kind of order according to how relevant it was. At the time that teletype was written a tech, not Hodge I believe, had compared 7 rounds to the AR-15 put into evidence at trial. Those seven rounds had a distinct marking on the firing pin whereas the AR-15 in evidence had a smooth firing pin, therefore it was the expert’s opinion that those 7 rounds were not fired from that AR-15. That is what caused the 10-2-75 teletype in question.
Later Hodges, removed the bolt and carrier assembly from the AR-15. The AR had been damaged by fire and could not be fired, so he fired test rounds out of another AR the FBI had using the bolt assembly from the melted AR. He compared the markings on this brass to brass recovered from Coler’s car.
The smooth firing pin resulted in Hodge stating that he could not determine one way or the other whether the brass recovered from Coler’s car was fired from that AR, BASED SOLELY ON THE FIRING PIN MARKS. So the claim that that rules out the rifles use is a lie, he merely came to the conclusion that the firing pin markings did not prove or disprove that that AR had fired the rounds in question. He was able to match the brass to the rifle by the extractor marks.
The other rounds with the marking on the primer were later matched to a different AR that the police later seized.
The jury did have the full ballistics report that was compiled after that teletype. Peltier had a hearing on this claim back in the mid 80s and lost.