Roadside Rest

ROADSIDE REST Early-day Arizona Makes Momentous Forensic History through the Barrel of a Pistol

A century or so ago, the theory and practice of law in Arizona was something of a joke. (No contemporary partisan remarks, please.) Judge John J. Hawkins deserves a historical footnote for presiding over Arizona Territory's briefest mistrial. All in the courtroom respectfully stood when the judge arrived. And when the judge took his seat at the bench, all but one person sat down.

"Are you the defendant in this case, sir?" asked the judge.

"No, Judge," replied the accused, "I'm the guy who stole the horse."

Our point being that early Arizona was not noted for its influence upon the refinement of American law. That changed. Today both the chief justice of the United States and the Supreme Court's first woman hail from Arizona. And few TV cop shows could manage without a reference to the Miranda decision, an Arizona case reinforcing the rights of criminal suspects.

Yet there was another development, long ago, that profoundly affected investigations all around the world. The landmark case was Arizona vs. Hadley in 1922. The trial resulted in the first conviction for first-degree murder in the United States obtained by photographic evidence of landand-groove markings on the bullet from the murder gun.

Only local publicity attended The details: on an evening in the autumn of 1921, an elderly couple named Johnson picked up hitchhiker Hadley at a Tucson service station. Hadley had gained the Johnsons' trust with a plausible but false tale. He said he needed to take some engine parts to where his car was broken down on the desert. As the Johnson car sped westward into the night, without warning or provocation, according to Johnson later, Hadley fired seven shots from the backseat. Four bullets struck Mrs. Johnson and three hit her husband. Johnson jammed his foot on the accelerator and Hadley fell or jumped from the car.

Despite his serious but not fatal wounds, Johnson pressed on to the tiny railroad hamlet of Stoval. Mrs. Johnson was dead on arrival there. Hadley was taken into custody when he casually walked into Stoval.

Only local publicity attended the episode. Nobody much believed that cow-country Arizona — only a decade into statehood — could establish a legal precedent. The details: on an evening in the autumn of 1921, an elderly couple named Johnson picked up hitchhiker Hadley at a Tucson service station. Hadley had gained the Johnsons' trust with a plausible but false tale. He said he needed to take some engine parts to where his car was broken down on the desert. As the Johnson car sped westward into the night, without warning or provocation, according to Johnson later, Hadley fired seven shots from the backseat. Four bullets struck Mrs. Johnson and three hit her husband. Johnson jammed his foot on the accelerator and Hadley fell or jumped from the car. Despite his serious but not fatal wounds, Johnson pressed on to the tiny railroad hamlet of Stoval. Mrs. Johnson was dead on arrival there. Hadley was taken into custody when he casually walked into Stoval. At his preliminary examination, Hadley claimed that he and the Johnsons had been ambushed by bandits. He said he had returned their gunfire. Because Johnson could not swear he saw Hadley fire the fatal bullets, it was the sort of story that a young, personable hitchhiker might sell to a jury.

To A.J. Eddy of Yuma, the case seemed just right for testing some of his theories. In Hadley's possession when arrested were a .32-caliber Spanish Mauser automatic pistol and a supply of Remington UMC cartridges.

A correspondence school lawyer, Eddy occasionally assisted the county attorney in preparing criminal cases. Eddy and others had been experimenting with comparison tests of differing guns and bullets. The twisted grooves that imparted stabilizing spin to a bullet also left distinct markings that could be recorded photographically.

Eddy believed that a bullet fired from a gun barrel was unique. No two guns produced identical markings. Thus bullet scratches could be equated with human fingerprints as acceptable criminal evidence.

Eddy worked with a bullet recovered from the body of Mrs. Johnson, with the murder weapon, with Hadley's ammunition, and with an assortment of other weapons.

The testimony of Eddy, supported by remarkably clear enlarged photos, was received with some skepticism by a Tucson judge and jury. Then, in a dramatic moment, the defense attorney dropped a spent bullet into Eddy's palm. The bullet was from another pistol, of the same make and caliber as Hadley's.

"Is this, or is it not, a bullet fired from the Hadley gun?" the defense demanded.

Eddy scrutinized the bullet and declared: "No, sir, but it was fired by a gun with the same twist."

Hadley's conviction was upheld by the state supreme court, and he was hanged. The science of forensic ballistics was formally recognized. The means of presenting and interpreting ballistics evidence improved in subsequent years. The adaptation of the comparison microscope in 1925 assisted the identification of fired bullets and cartridges. The device makes possible the simultaneous study, through the same eyepiece, of an evidence bullet and a test bullet.

Arizona has come a long way since vigilantes dragged suspected robber John Heath from his jail cell and hanged him from a telegraph pole outside the Tombstone Courthouse. The frontier coroner's jury took note of the high altitude and attributed the death to "emphysema of the lungs, self-inflicted or otherwise."