Sherry West and Gun Shot Residue on Parents
There has been an interesting development in the Sherry West case. Both parents of the little baby who was murdered four months ago tested positive for gunshot residue on them. The father, however, was not at the scene at the time of the shooting.
I can’t help but wonder if any GSR was found on the suspects.
According to the report, however, it is possible that gunshot residue can easily transfer and may be explainable.
This is a strange case with even stranger people involved. I have to wonder who would shoot a baby in the head, killing the baby, while only shooting the mother in the leg? The father must have seen his wife acting crazy before this happened for him to go nuts and blame his wife for the shooting of their baby. I am anxious to see what proof they have on the suspects in this case.
I don’t know if we’ll ever see that. I’m not sure that this is actually being adequately investigated.
One of the boys’s family and his attorney have said that he was with his aunt at breakfast at the time of the shooting.
Police have arrested two of his family members and charged them with lying in a police statement and tampering with evidence. One of them has also been charged with being a felon in possession of a gun. I would like to see video footage of these statements so we can tell whether or not they were lying to the police or whether the investigation has been botched.
One of the attorneys said that in such a small town, an alibi defense isn’t likely to avert a guilty verdict in this case.
Police did find a gun submerged in a saltwater pond, but the testing hasn’t been completed yet so still it isn’t certain whether that gun is actually linked to this shooting.
The Brunswick city commissioner has been arrested, charged with influencing a witness and obstructing the investigation of this case.
This has turned into one very strange, very messy case with a lot of questionable people involved. I’m not sure how likely it is that the truth will ever be known to the public. It sounds like those two boys will be found guilty regardless of what the evidence says, even if it eventually suggests they’re innocent. Having public defenders doesn’t help their case any either, as from what I’ve heard, those lawyers are usually too over-burdened to follow their cases as closely as they need to. In my experience, they seem to be pretty good at getting their clients plea bargains, but usually not at winning cases before a jury, especially serious cases like this one.
I hope justice prevails and whoever is actually responsible is who goes to jail. I just don’t have a lot of faith in the criminal court system these days. I hope this case will restore some of that faith.
No GSR was found on the suspects, however they weren’t caught for something like 24 hours, and GSR isn’t very reliable as evidence because it’s easily transferred or washed off. The FBI quit using GSR analysis quite a few years ago because it isn’t worth the cost of doing it due to its unreliable nature. GSR can disappear from the skin after just 4 hours, so having it not found on the suspects isn’t particularly surprising or meaningful.
I also just read that Sherry West had 5 particles of GSR on her at the time she was tested, and her husband only had 1 microscopic particle. As purely evidence, it seems to me like her husband would have had at least as much GSR as Sherry had if he had been the shooter and hadn’t cleaned his hands off, but I’m not an expert.
The article I read is here: http://www.news4jax.com/news/lawyer-no-gunshot-residue-on-suspect/-/475880/21265454/-/dlkudrz/-/index.html
The reporter in the video provided some good coverage on the issues surrounding the GSR in this case.