Search warrants

VTwriter said:

Background: a teenager's murdered body is found on a mountainside a year after his disappearance. The police consider the boy's father to be the prime suspect. The gun used in the murder was never found. On the surface or buried? If it's on the surface, animals have disturbed the skeleton. And pretty much all that would be left is a skeleton. Although a skeleton will show signs of a bullet wound, it will not contain a bullet usually (if the bullet was a through and through, it wouldn't even be with the skeleton, and mushroom-type bullets present serious problems). They may find the bullet on the ground, but may not. Absent a bullet, determining caliber can be difficult with just a skeleton. Unless the bullet goes through a bone, such as the skull, and the bone doesn't fragment from the shock, you're not going to be able to do it.

The police arrive at the father's house with a search warrant to look for the murder weapon and confiscate his laptop computer that might contain evidence. Unless the computer is specifically contained in the warrant, no it's not. And if it's contained in the warrant, it will be because of specific information that makes it likely that there is evidence on the computer.

Questions:

1) What if the father isn't home when the police arrive (he lives alone). Do they have to wait for him to arrive to start searching? Would they break in if he wasn't home? If they are nice, they'll wait. More likely, they will force entry. Depending upon the department, entry might not do any damage. There's some tricks that if you're not in a rush to open a door and not do any damage.

2) How thorough would the search be? How long would it take? Depends. What are they looking for and how much of the house does the warrant cover? Searches have been known to take days and result in the walls being torn down.

3) If they police find a gun, and it's the same caliber as the murder weapon, would they arrest him or wait to determine if it's actually the murder weapon? (Turns out it's not the murder weapon.) The father had claimed before that he'd never owned a gun. Maybe. Depends upon how confident they are and how likely they think it is that the dad will run.

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Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

VTwriter said:

Thanks, Jim. I had a spent bullet found in the skull. Watch you caliber with this. Large caliber weapons will go right through the skull, unless the bullet fragments. You might want to look at John F. Kennedy autopsy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to give you an idea of how a bullet interacts with the skull. And the skull frequently breaks as bullets enter, rather than a nice, round hole.

What was left of the body was undisturbed since a tree had fallen on the corpse. Within a couple of hours of death? Because the scavengers will be there within hours. I doubt a tree falling would stop most scavengers. I think even with a tree falling, you'd still have some scattering of bones, but that's normal. Most bodies recovered after a year that are above ground will be missing at least some bones.

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Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

VTwriter said:

Background: a teenager's murdered body is found on a mountainside a year after his disappearance. The police consider the boy's father to be the prime suspect. The gun used in the murder was never found..

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Given the thread title, I have a more basic question: What about this situation makes it look like a suicide? Nothing in the OP indicates that. If the weapon isn't present at the scene where the remains were found, the first thing the police will assume is murder, not suicide.

caw

With a .22, you want to make sure you hit the target just right. At least for the immediate, a .22 to the head is not necessarily fatal. Anything above the ear line is not likely to hit anything immediately fatal. Effective shoot is behind the ear aiming straight at the opposite ear, taking off the top of the brain stem. And you want to be in line with the bottom of the ear.

Unless you use a hollow point. Problem is a hollow point is next to impossible to get identification as to which gun it was fired from. Depending upon the fragments, you might not even get the caliber.

If the cops are lazy, they quit after the first gun. If they're good, they quit after there's no place a gun could be is checked. You can make either believable.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

To expand a bit upon Jim's guidance...

Generally speaking in the US, a found body is deemed a suspicious death until a ruling (articulating cause of death) is rendered by the jurisdiction's medical examiner (or coroner, assuming he/she is a forensic pathologist).

A search warrant can only be issued by a court of jurisdiction upon presentation of probable cause (sufficient evidence to convince a reasonable person that a crime has been committed).

The warrant must articulate the location/scope of the search. and the specific items sought. The execution of the search warrant must also be reasonable - for example, one cannot search for an axe in a jewelry box. However, a search for documents and/or data can be the most comprehensive - and that would suffice to have any computer and storage media searched. A search for a gun would not stop upon finding one firearm - it would likely intensify.

Search warrants are usually restricted to daylight execution, unless language authorizing execution during the hours of darkness is contained in the body of order (search warrants are court orders).

The owner or custodian of the property need not be present for the search to commence. However, any damage caused upon entry may be the responsibility of the agency executing the warrant. They must leave the location secured in some manner. Damage incurred during the search may well be another matter; it'll depend on the jurisdiction and the circumstances of the case.

A receipt for items seized is left with the owner/custodian (if present) or left in a conspicuous place within the property searched.

I'll have to disagree on one point - the .22LR caliber (round-nose lead) can be particularly nasty as a head shot. It usually has sufficient velocity to penetrate the skull at close range, but typically does not make an exit wound. Instead, the round can, and frequently does, dissipate its energy within the cranial cavity spinning in a circular path, trapped within the circumference of the skull, and doing massive tissue damage. Hollow point rounds tend to mushroom and break apart upon penetration; most tissue damage will be found in the vicinity of the entrance wound. Shrapnel (bullet pieces and bone shards) may be found anywhere in the surrounding tissue.

Intact bullets are obviously easier than fragmented projectiles to examine forensically, but fragments can have considerable evidentiary value. It all depends... mostly on you, the author, and how you craft your plot. Best of luck - Write It!

ironmikezero said:

I'll have to disagree on one point - the .22LR caliber (round-nose lead) can be particularly nasty as a head shot. It usually has sufficient velocity to penetrate the skull at close range, but typically does not make an exit wound. Instead, the round can, and frequently does, dissipate its energy within the cranial cavity spinning in a circular path, trapped within the circumference of the skull, and doing massive tissue damage. Hollow point rounds tend to mushroom and break apart upon penetration; most tissue damage will be found in the vicinity of the entrance wound. Shrapnel (bullet pieces and bone shards) may be found anywhere in the surrounding tissue.

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Iron Mike has a good description of a .22 round inside the skull. What I was trying to get at is a .22 isn't always immediately fatal, although your chances of living for long aren't high.

I had a suicide who used a .22 instead of his .45, presumably for neatness. The .22 entered posterior to the ear and about one inch above. Bullet did exactly what Iron Mike says (the doctor showed the EMT crew the CAT scan -- some docs are really cool). But it didn't kill him immediately. It took about nine hours, because the brain stem was not impacted and nothing that had been hit was fatal. I doubt he had any higher brain function, but definitely had reflexes left. And I know another EMT that went through the same basic process. His victim survived five hours. Both bullets did not significantly fragment.

So a .22 to the head might kill you, but not rapidly, which is of concern to a murderer. Which is probably why people who use a .22 seem to use more bullets.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe