Megan Cassidy

The Republic | azcentral.com

None of the bullets marked as evidence in the dismissed I-10 shooting case could be linked to the gun owned by former suspect Leslie Merritt Jr., and none ever may point investigators to an individual weapon, according to a ballistic expert's report.

Two other authorities indicated that one victim’s tire would have malfunctioned immediately after it was shot. That posed a problem for the state’s case, because the tire didn’t signal damage until the evening of Aug. 30, hours after Merritt had pawned his gun.

Court filings made public Thursday offer a behind-the-scenes look at forensic evidence that unraveled the case against Merritt, the only person ever named as a suspect in a string of Valley freeway shootings last summer.

Scroll below to see the reports.

Though Merritt’s attorneys had discussed the essence of the reports after the case against him had been dismissed in April, until Thursday the details behind their findings had been sealed from public view.

The state’s case against Merritt rose and fell on ballistics. He was arrested Sept. 18, after Arizona Department of Public Safety officials said his 9mm pistol could be traced to bullets found at four of the 11 crime scenes.

Defense attorneys said the released reports strip investigators of any link to Merritt, who no longer faces any charges but still potentially could be recharged.

DPS officials said the situation is not that simple.

“What this tells me is that we have two experts that differ in opinion,” DPS spokesman Damon Cecil said about the ballistics report. “It’s not surprising. It helped us to better realize the strengths and weaknesses of the case, and what we need to do to further identify additional evidence.”

Haag report: 6 brands of bullets tested in Merritt's gun

By Feb. 3, the crux of the evidence against Merritt was in the hands of Lucien Haag, a Carefree-based firearms expert known as a heavyweight in the field of ballistics.

It was five months after Merritt’s arrest, and Haag had been hired by prosecutors to offer a second opinion.

He was handed six packages of evidence: DPS’ test-fired bullets; four bullets found at three of the crime scenes; and Merritt’s gun, a Hi-Point 9mm C9 pistol.

He test-fired six types of bullets into a water tank and examined the markings left by the gun, known as striations.

In his report, Haag acknowledged the four evidence bullets were fired from a Hi-Point 9mm C9 pistol.

But Haag said the firearm characteristically leaves scant markings on its rounds, making “definitive associations between fired bullets and the firearm difficult to impossible.”

He said that C9 pistols like Merritt's produced markings that were very “ammunition-sensitive,” adding that there is “poor engagement between the lands in C9 barrels and bullets fired through them.”

The metal between the grooves in a gun barrel are called "lands."

Haag found that only two of the brands that he fired resulted in markings that made for a “positive association” with Merritt’s gun.

Read the ballistics report:

Further, he said, the brand of crime-scene bullets could not be established.

“The four evidence bullets … could not be excluded or identified as having been fired in the Hi-Point C9 pistol, serial number P1893054,” he wrote.

On the last day of February, Haag met at DPS to return the evidence and see the crime lab’s take on the comparisons. He concluded his report with an assessment of this analysis: “The areas demonstrated by (the DPS examiner) on February 29th … in the opinion of this examiner were insufficient to constitute an identification.”

Outside firearms expert: Comparisons often subjective

The problems with the state’s case lie in the subjective nature of firearms comparisons, one outside expert said.

Each examiner has his or her own threshold of confidence, said Matthew Noedel, a forensic scientist based in Washington state.

“It’s very personal, experience-based opinion,” he said. “What’s enough? That’s our age-old question in this field.”

Noedel likened firearms comparisons to a sliding scale. The top, say, 30 percent of obvious matches, he said, everyone will agree on. Everyone will agree on the the bottom 30 percent of eliminations as well.

“It’s the middle that we struggle with,” he said.

Tire experts hired by defense debunk DPS 'run flat' theory

Merritt’s defense team hired experts of their own during pretrial proceedings: a criminalist and an engineer, meant to test the state’s theory that a durable tire may not show signs of injury until days after it was shot.

The reports centered on one of the four crimes listed in the case: Late on the evening of Aug. 30, a BMW driver noticed his tire-pressure light activate on his way home from the airport. Mechanics later found a bullet inside the tire.

The incident proved problematic for investigators from the start, as Merritt had pawned his gun hours earlier that day.

But DPS officials reasoned that because the victim drove with “run-flat” tires, the bullet may have lodged itself in the tire wall days earlier, preventing any immediate indication of damage.

Defense experts John Daws and Erik Brown said it was unlikely this was the case.

Brown, the criminalist, said there was evidence of a high-velocity puncture and a lead deposit inside of the tire. This would challenge the state’s theory that a slug had created an airtight seal for the tire wall for days before falling in.

This demonstrated that the inner tire was struck “at the time the projectile was fired and struck the sidewall, and not at some later point,” Brown wrote.

Read the tire pressure report:

The Daws report focused on tire pressure and how long it would take the vehicle’s tire-pressure monitoring system to alert for a leak.

His findings indicated “the vehicle’s TPMS would be able to indicate low tire pressure within one second of bullet penetration of the tire sidewall,” Daws wrote.

In a motion originally filed under seal April 5, defense attorneys paired this finding with DPS’ interview with the BMW driver. Upon questioning, the victim said he was “no expert” but said it was “highly unlikely” that the bullet had lodged its way into the side of the tire.

The detective pressed: “When you got out of the car, you don’t recall any of your warning lights being on at all?”

“When I got to the airport it was fine,” the victim said. “Nothing had come on when I got to the airport.”

DPS said it did not conduct tests similar to Brown's.

Reports were key to dismissal of charges

Haag’s findings — and perhaps the tire reports, as well — served as the catalyst for Merritt’s recent release.

In the span of a week, the 21-year-old landscaper’s bond was eliminated, he walked out of jail, and on April 25 all 15 felony charges against him were dismissed.

The existence of Haag’s report first was revealed in open court April 19. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Warren Granville eliminated Merritt’s bond during that morning hearing, allowing Merritt to walk out of jail hours later.

Prosecutors on April 22 asked that the case be dismissed, and all charges were dropped by April 25.

Defense attorneys filed the Daws and Brown reports in court April 5 and April 18, respectively.

There remains a caveat to Merritt’s release. His charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning prosecutors may level a case against him at a later date.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery has implied that prosecutors’ decision to drop the case was solely based on state-gleaned evidence — specifically, Haag’s report.

“This is a matter of prosecutors and law enforcement doing their job,” he told reporters Wednesday. "Mr. Merritt could have been representing himself pro se and we would have gotten to this same point.”

Prosecutors declined comment Thursday.

Defense attorney Jason Lamm said both sets of findings debunked the case against his client.

“The independent firearms expert disproved what DPS initially thought, which was the sole link to Mr. Merritt,” he said in a Thursday interview. “And the tire expert proves that Mr. Merritt being responsible for the shootings is impossible, based on an additional field of forensic science.”

Cecil, the DPS spokesman, said investigators were conducting follow-up examinations that prosecutors had requested.

He stressed that Haag did not take issue with the way DPS conducted its examination; he simply differed with DPS experts' opinion. Cecil said the state had not hired its own tire expert but said that was a possibility depending on how the investigation progressed.

“I don’t know what it means for the case,” he said of the reports. “We’ll have to wait and see.”