Handloads for Self-Defense (again) and Actual Cases

[Clod Stomper]

Yes, I know that this has been debated ad nauseum. I have, for the most part, been in the camp that says it really doesn't matter what you use as long as it's a good shoot. I still believe that, but I do usually carry factory ammo, just in case.

On the only other site that I visit with any regularity, there is a thread about a self-defense situation that drifted to the use of handloads for defense. But unlike other threads that have debated the issue to death, someone actually posted about cases where the use of handloads really was a factor. After reading this, I will start carrying factory ammo exclusively.

Scroll to post 24 if you want to get straight to the relevant parts.

http://www.65grendel...is-pants!/page3

I still believe that in most cases, using handloads won't be an issue. But for that small chance that it may be, I'll carry factory.

Will

Edited August 13, 2012 by Clod Stomper

[Dolomite_supafly]

Talk to DLM37015. He has been there and done that. From now on he carries factory loaded ammo and even keeps the boxes until that ammo is replaced.

Dolomite

[MacGyver]

There's some good information in that thread. Thread's like this are often on based on supposition. I don't know that I've ever seen a case cited.

I'm going to post the data from the above thread for posterity.

The question is not whether you will be found legally guilty in a criminal case. The problems lie in the civil case to follow. You may win, but the more you have to defend, the more you have to pay the leaches that defend you from the leaches assaulting you. AA ammo is good stuff. I'll use it for my defense. I'll use just about any ammo labeled "defense" in my handguns, as long as I've tested it to be reliable.

Here are some references that I haven't confirmed of some problems using handloads. As you can see, one of the main problems is standardization of the load with residue indicating distance from the muzzle when shot, which isn't standard with your handload.

NH v. Kennedy

James Kennedy, a sergeant on the Hampton, NH police force, pursued a drunk driver whose reckless operation of the vehicle had forced other motorists off the road. The suspect ended up in a ditch, stalled and trying to get underway again. Advised by radio that responding backup officers were still a distance away, and fearing that the man would get back on the road and kill himself and others, Kennedy approached the vehicle. At the driver’s door, the suspect grabbed Kennedy’s Colt .45 auto and pulled it towards himself. It discharged in his face, causing massive injury.

The reload in the gun was a 200 grain Speer JHP, loaded to duplicate the 1000 fps from a 5” barrel then advertised by Speer for the same bullet in loaded cartridge configuration.

This was the first case where I saw the argument, “Why wasn’t regular ammunition deadly enough for you,” used by opposing counsel. They charged Kennedy with aggravated assault. They made a large issue out of his use of handloads, suggesting that they were indicative of a reckless man obsessed with causing maximum damage.

Defense counsel hired the expert I suggested, Jim Cirillo, who did a splendid job of demolishing that argument and other bogus arguments against Kennedy at trial, and Kennedy was acquitted.

This case dates back to the late 1970s. The local courts tell me that the case documentation will be on file at Rockingham County Superior Court, PO Box 1258, Kingston, NH 03843. File search time is billed at $25 per hour for cases such as this that date back prior to 1988.

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)

[guyandarifle]

Yes, I know that this has been debated ad nauseum. I have, for the most part, been in the camp that says it really doesn't matter what you use as long as it's a good shoot. I still believe that, but I do usually carry factory ammo, just in case.

On the only other site that I visit with any regularity, there is a thread about a self-defense situation that drifted to the use of handloads for defense. But unlike other threads that have debated the issue to death, someone actually posted about cases where the use of handloads really was a factor. After reading this, I will start carrying factory ammo exclusively.

Scroll to post 24 if you want to get straight to the relevant parts.

http://www.65grendel...is-pants!/page3

I still believe that in most cases, using handloads won't be an issue. But for that small chance that it may be, I'll carry factory.

Will

The first thing I'd note is that if you find yourself in a position where your gun or ammunition are being called into question things aren't going well already. What we're talking about are "complicating" factors.

The first example (it being from the 70's and all) is all but dead in any realistic sense. As opposed to 30yrs ago ammo isn't just "ammo" anymore and factory ammunition intended for SD is squeezing just about every last FPS they can without blowing things up and some of them are doing it with proprietary bullets. If one were so inclined a pretty good argument could be made these days that some factory ammo in common SD calibers actually exceeds what can be safely handloaded by a civilian with component bullets and cannister powders. Having said this it'd still cost money to make a fool of the prosecuter's attempts to make the arguement.

The Bias case (it's kinda funny that "bias" is the actual case name) is predicated entirely on the galactic outlier of the handload in question bearing almost no discernable similarity to anything any of us would load. In other words there is no load any of us would carry that would have not left GSR 'O Plenty on Lise Bias under the described circumstances and that case would have played out nothing like it did.

The above observation of the Bias case isn't without caveats regarding SD handloads. What I'm really trying to show is that even with cases to cite we have to go way, WAY off the beaten path. A LOT of things need to have gotten very much sideways for someone to find themselves seriously having to defend the use of handloads (or X pistol modification or Y caliber) but people have been struck by meteorites too so the only certain way to avoid the risk is to avoid the issue by keeping things "standardized". Honestly though modern factory SD rounds are damn good and if one is a handloader anyway it's not any real hassle to handload for practice and carry factory.

[dlm37015]

you will have to defend yourself in civil court .that cast lots of monet even if you win.if you do win you can sue them back but in most cases you wont get anything

[guyandarifle]

you will have to defend yourself in civil court .that cast lots of monet even if you win.if you do win you can sue them back but in most cases you wont get anything

If I understand how things work that would be much more difficult in a Castle Doctrine state than otherwise. (Assuming of course you were cleared criminally)

[dlm37015]

if you get sued it still cost you money even if nothing but time off from work. a good lawyer in nashville cost 350- 400 per hour

[Dolomite_supafly]

Anyone can file a civil suit against anyone else for ANY reason. Any suit filed must be heard by a judge even if it is frivolous. I know I would not trust my life or livelihood without an attorney.

Even if the person filing the suit is 100% in the wrong and you are 100% right the suit will still find itself in front of a judge at least once. And you would be surprised how things can turn out if you don't show or you don't have an attorney by your side.

I know the jurisdiction I worked for said that it cost them on average $15K to go before the judge and then have the case dismissed. I magine it would cost at least 1/3 of that for the average person to defend a frivolous lawsuit.

Dolomite

[JAB]

if you get sued it still cost you money even if nothing but time off from work. a good lawyer in nashville cost 350- 400 per hour

I thought that TN state law was changed a few years ago so that if the use of deadly force is ruled to be justifiable then anyone who wants to bring a civil suit has to pay 100% of court costs as well as the 'defendant's' lawyer fees and some, other expenses. Is that not the case?

[TMF]

I thought that TN state law was changed a few years ago so that if the use of deadly force is ruled to be justifiable then anyone who wants to bring a civil suit has to pay 100% of court costs as well as the 'defendant's' lawyer fees and some, other expenses. Is that not the case?

Who is the authority on making that ruling? If it doesn't go to criminal trial than it is never ruled anything, yes?

[tnhawk]

While I load my practice ammunition, I wouldn't want to have the additional defense burden caused by using handloads in a defense situation.

[Jonnin]

Just a thought, but *presumably* the lightly loaded rounds that left no powder burns in the "suicide" ruling would have been on par with handloaded practice ammo, not handloaded SD ammo. IE if you handload at all, and someone in your home decides to off theyself, you could be in the same situation --- no matter what you pack into your carry gun. It just did not sound like a "carry gun" type situation to me from what little I read of it. It sounded like what would happen if you shot a cowboy action load or similar underpowered wadcutting plinker load.

Edited August 15, 2012 by Jonnin