Going Ballistic with Radley Balko
Murder Sheet
MurderSheet
3.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2023
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A Chicago judge recently became the first judge in the country to bar the use of ballistics matching testimony in a criminal trial. What inspired him to make that ruling? What does it mean for other cases-- like Delphi-- where ballistics testimony seems to play a key role?
To get some answers, we turn to Radley Balko-- a journalist whose coverage of the case first brought it to our attention.
You can follow Radley Balko at his Substack: https://radleybalko.substack.com/
If you are interested in other perspectives on this subject, you can listen to our earlier episodes on this subject:
https://art19.com/shows/murder-sheet/episodes/a00b85a5-138d-449f-b101-d6be85e2e14d
https://art19.com/shows/murder-sheet/episodes/aa77c321-eb87-4aac-a7cf-01b75cc74d12
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We were really interested recently to get the latest from the watch, which is a |
| 0:04.9 | sub-stack run by journalist Radley Balco. Radley focuses extensively on the |
| 0:10.7 | criminal justice system and his work is always worth reading. But his May 25th |
| 0:16.3 | story, Devil in the Groves, will be of special interest to people following the |
| 0:21.5 | Delphi murder's case. As we all know, a key part of the case against the |
| 0:25.7 | accused man, Richard Allen, is the fact that an unspent round found at the crime |
| 0:29.9 | scene can allegedly be linked back to a weapon owned by Allen. That has led many |
| 0:34.7 | observers to wonder just how reliable and credible that sort of toolmark |
| 0:38.4 | evidence actually is. Radley's story does not deal with Delphi, but it does focus |
| 0:44.7 | squarely on the important issue of just how much stock we should all put into |
| 0:49.2 | the testimony of Balistic's experts. To quote Radley's story, last February |
| 0:55.7 | Chicago Circuit court judge William Hooks made some history. He became the first |
| 1:01.7 | judge in the country to bar the use of Balistic's matching testimony in a |
| 1:06.4 | criminal trial. The case in question is Illinois versus Ricky Winfield. What led |
| 1:13.6 | judge Hooks to make his surprising ruling? What consequences might it have? Can |
| 1:20.1 | we expect other judges around the country to join Judge Hooks in barring the |
| 1:24.4 | testimony of Balistic's experts? To help us get our heads around all of this, we |
| 1:30.3 | asked Radley Balko to join us this week. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist. And |
| 1:37.5 | I'm Kevin Greenley. I'm an attorney. We first connected while looking into the |
| 1:43.4 | Bergerchef murders in Indiana cold case. Together, we built a spreadsheet |
| 1:48.9 | documenting hundreds of cases of restaurant-related homicides. That original |
| 1:54.8 | spreadsheet gave way to our podcast, the murder sheet. Now we maintain that same |
... |
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