Hypothetical question about hollow points

Hypothetically, if there was a shooting and if it was presumably justified, does the use of common factory hollow point ammunition in stopping the threat work for or against the shooter in the eyes of the law? Is it arguable?

Depending upon your opinion, then does loading a gun with a specific type of ammunition imply any intent on the part of the shooter?

Disclaimer:

Understandably, all answers posted to this hypothetical question are conjecture and not necessarily fact.

Use of any and all types of ammunition can and will be used against you by the prosecutor. FMJ becomes armor-piercing; JHP becomes expanding extra-lethal ammunition.

The only way to guard against it is to have a competent defense attorney. Remember, YOU may know what JHP and FMJ are and what their intended uses are, but the Jury may (and most likely does) not.

If it were a justifiable shoot, then there would be no reason for the DA to prosecute you. :scrutiny:

What do the police use?

That's why I preceeded "justified" with presumably in the question. It might allow for a different legal tack later on.

If you're in New Jersey and you ain't a copper, you're in major trouble. Don't think it's a problem anywhere else in the country.
In the criminal court business, a justified shooting case with a good attorney on your side (if it goes to court) ought to come out on your side. In civil court, now...

I don't think the use of JHP would be an issue in criminal court, but it certainly could be an issue in civil court when you're sued by the victim or their family. However, if your attorney can convince the jury that the shooting was a justifiable case of self defense, the type of ammo used becomes irrelevant.

Hollowpoints can absolutely be an issue at trial. Ever heard of Harold Fish?.......

Most jurors are ignorant of firearms, and any good prosecutor will use every angle at trial, including harping on the "excessive injury" caused by hollowpoints compared to other ammo.

Although I never understood why Fish's lawyer didnt work hard to refute the portrayal of his clients using hollowpoints as a bad thing. I can think of a few ways a good defense attorney could refute that so that it was basically a mute point.

If your local cops use JHP's you can use that to your advantage at trial. Accentuate the reasons why they use them rather than FMJ's. The reasons they cite are the same reasons why any citizen also carries JHP's.

Hollowpoints are specifically designed to penetrate to a set depth and then stop, expending all of their energy inside the target and minimizing overpenetration.

Imagine a shoot where a round of FMJ ammo enters the perp, leaves the other side, travels through a wall and hits and kills a small child in his/her bed.

Now, if only the shooter had been using a hollowpoint round, the shot would have stopped inside the bad guy, and the child would still be safe asleep in their bed.

So please, use hollowpoints in your guns. It's for the children.

If it were a justifiable shoot, then there would be no reason for the DA to prosecute you.


A good shoot is a good shoot, hollow points should not play a part in criminal prosecution. A decent attorney will easily defend you in a civil case. Handloads can be a factor if there is some question with forensics regarding distances between you and your assailant etc.

If you're in New Jersey and you ain't a copper, you're in major trouble

If you're one of the few in NJ with a carry permit yes you'd be in some kind of trobule. Maybe. It would probably depend on the totality of the circumstances. If you shot some terrorists that were killing innocent people the prosecutor and AG wouldn't care what type of ammo you were using. Hollow points are legal to buy, possess, and shoot at the range. If your shooting was in your house the hollow points will not be a factor. See NJSP.org, click on firearms.

No matter what you use, some crap-weasel lawyer will find fault with it.

So, your honor. The defendant has stated that s\he chose to apply lethal force upon my client with a fmj projectile, which had failed to be lethal and caused my client to continue to live...:barf:

I figure in court it's basically "damned if you do, damned if you don't" so you may as well stick to hollowpoints.

And I can't really fault a DA for taking such a position, as much as I'd like to. He's using an advantage (in this case the ignorance of the jury) to help him win his case. Most jurors don't know a damn thing about firearms.

And I can't really fault a DA for taking such a position, as much as I'd like to. He's using an advantage (in this case the ignorance of the jury) to help him win his case.

Here is one reason why the system is seriously broken. The prosecutor is NOT interested in the truth or actual guilt or innocence of the accused. Most just care about winning and will use any falsehood they can get away with in order to do so. Your average prosecutor will happily send an innocent person to prison if it means keeping their conviction rate high, thus securing their political future. AND, even worse, most Americans have the same attitude as gotarheels03, "I can't really fault a DA for taking such a position..." :barf:

[/rant]

I am not sure, but I think most of this arguement is about the exceptions rather than the rule. Oklahoma, where I live, a good shoot is a good shoot regardless of what you use. It is too easy to make a DA's arguement against your choice of loads look like the DA is just fishing.

Hollowpoints can absolutely be an issue at trial. Ever heard of Harold Fish?.......

Every aspect of a shoot will likely be brought up in trial, but that doesn't mean the information necessarily is good or bad. As for Harold Fish, yes, a couple of the jurors did not like the fact that he used hollowpoints, but that did NOT convict him. What got him convicted was the fact that his accounting of the events that supposedly proved him innocent didn't match forensic evidence. The jury believed the forensic evidence, not Fish's story.

If you want to press the matter, one of the jurors didn't understand why Fish had a gun in the first place while hiking. So it could be argued that having a gun will work against you in court as well.

Getting back to the original context of a "presumably" good shoot. If you are in court, it isn't a presumably good shoot. It is a potentially bad shoot. If it is a good shoot, the law does not stipulate what forms of lethal force must be used to make the use of lethal force legal. It may be a bullet, frying pan, or Chevy.

While it's true that any ammunition is subject to be cast in a bad light, a hollowpoint leaves a prosecutor or civil litigator a little bigger window of opportunity...all else being equal.

As far as the overpenetration question goes...it's probably an instance of swallowing a camel and gagging on a gnat. Missing the intended target...no matter what the bullet style...would probably be the greater concern.

Depends on the jurisdiction and how your local prosecutor views citizen SD.

If it's a good shoot, it shouldn't go past a police investigation.

Find out what the cops in your area are carrying and buy yourself a supply.

Carry what the local LEO's carry . Could help .

If it is a good shoot it shouldn't matter if you hit the perp with a 105mm.

However, there are no guarantees in life, and if you live in a jurisdiction with an anti-freedom District Attorney you are going to be subject to an absolute living hell no matter what you use.

Here is one reason why the system is seriously broken. The prosecutor is NOT interested in the truth or actual guilt or innocence of the accused. Most just care about winning and will use any falsehood they can get away with in order to do so. Your average prosecutor will happily send an innocent person to prison if it means keeping their conviction rate high, thus securing their political future. AND, even worse, most Americans have the same attitude as gotarheels03, "I can't really fault a DA for taking such a position..."

I am an attorney. I have MANY friends/classmates who are DAs in various cities around the state and not ONE of them would knowingly send an innocent person to prison in order to keep their #s high. You imply that MOST would lie/deceive/etc. just to win..and that is just NOT the case.

Maybe you are ignorant of attorneys, maybe you've had a bad experience with one, or maybe you just regurgitate the lines that other lemmings throw out there...but whatever it is it is NOT the truth.

There are SOME DAs out there that are so focused on keeping their #s high that they disregard the truth, but those people are a minute percentage of the DAs in practice.

JHPs reduce the risk of over penetration by being specifically designed to stop inside the human body. A bullet that over penetrates has the risk of hitting unintended and innocent bystanders. Seems like a pretty logical reason to justify using JHPs to me.

Quote:

>JHPs reduce the risk of over penetration by being specifically designed to stop inside the human body. A bullet that over penetrates has the risk of hitting unintended and innocent bystanders.<
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Assuming that we never, ever miss the intended target. If we do, it won't make a lotta difference.

not ONE of them would knowingly send an innocent person to prison in order to keep their #s high.

It only matters if it's the one that prosecutes my case would do it, not what 99% of them would do.

How many Nifongs are there?

Does anyone have any legitimate statistics?

How does one play these odds effectively?

My wife and I suffered a rare personal tragedy earlier this year (nothing involving the legal system). It didn't matter worth a lick that it "seldom ever happens" when it happened to us.

I don't care about what motivates attorneys. I do care about keeping them from ruining my life when I'm innocent.

I do care about keeping them from ruining my life when I'm innocent.

...by relying on another attorney. People always forget that.

Maybe we need laws passed MANDATING the use of hollow points for guns intended for self defense. The lower chance of penetrating a wall and hitting an innocent bystander makes HP's the safer choice. After all, if it saves just one child's life.......

Ignore all the people in this thread saying how it is a big deal. Type of ammo has no relevance to asserting or rebutting a self defense claim, even if it could be used to infer some intent of inflicting maximum damage on someone. The only way it could become relevant is if the police noticed your ammo and when they mentioned it, you made some unwise comment implying you were a vigilante out to inflict maximum damage on criminals. Then the use of the exotic ammo would be relevant as part of corroborating the testimony of the cops as to what you said. It would become part of an attempt to rebut your assertion that you possessed the requisite mental state to engage in self defense. But it is the unwise statement admitting it was a bad shoot that puts them on that track, not the ammo itself. Using expanding ammo isnt per se evidence of any particular state of mind, especially in an age when all cops use it.

I could see choice of ammo being relevant in say a civil suit, but I would bet there is hostile caselaw. Why? Because cops have been using hollowpoints for ages with official sanction and I am almost certain that at least one or two dead goblins have filed suit over the use of hollowpoints. And probably lost.

The use of HPs is usually a small part of a larger case with far more compelling evidence. Typically they are circumstantial evidence of someone's intent, which figures heavily into the various degrees of murder and manslaughter but NOT into self defense. They will not turn a good shoot into a bad shoot, only a bad shoot into a worse shoot. Most cases indicate a profound ignorance of firearms amongst the judiciary. For example, some cases refer to full metal jacket as being ultra deadly though most only refer to hps in this fashion.

Found a bunch of "possession of firearm in furtherance of a drug crime" cases (eg United States v. Pugh, 175 Fed. Appx. 390) where courts hold that possessing a gun loaded with hollow point ammunition "militates against an inference of innocent use such as hunting or target practice." Note that this is after an ATF agent testified that hollow point bullets were especially suited for self-defense and "offered better protection than an ordinary bullet" so this wouldnt necessarily be apposite in a self defense determination. The court appears to beleive that either self defense isnt a legitimate activity or that drug dealers aren't entitled to it. Yet there are loads of cases where drug dealers do use lethal force in bona fide self defense and are excused, so this is probably a holding confined to this particular crime.
Wow, drug dealer in United States v. Gridley, 1990 U.S. App. LEXIS 13111 (7th Cir., August 1, 1990) armed with 1911 full of mixed glazers and HPs. That would hurt. This is an interesting take on the earlier drug/gun caselaw. He has an interesting defense on appeal, that he always carried the gun anyway because it was his right to do so, and his dealing of cocaine was only incidental to his exercise of this right and the two were unconnected. Court rejects this because basicaclly the intent of the law was to criminalize this otherwise lawful behavior when someone is dealing narcotics (duh).
In a 1st degree murder case involving public defenders, crackheads named "Bobo" and defendants with girlfriends name Shantay, a doctor was brought in to "testify concerning the purpose of a bullet designed with a hollow-point." This evidence was challenged unsuccessfully, but only on the grounds that the doctor was not an expert on ballistics (he was an expert on bullet wounds, not an expert on projectile design per se). State v. Pulliam, 950 S.W.2d 360, 364 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1996). This was part of a much wider body of evidence establshing the defendant's malice and intent to commit murder (which you need to get 1st degree instead of 2nd degree murder).
PEOPLE v. KING, 2002 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 9143 (California Unpublished Opinions 2002)- Another mention of hollow points in upholding a 1st degree murder conviction. CA conviction of gang leader for "aiding and abetting murder" who "supplied to this enterprise a gun loaded with highly lethal hollow-point bullets."
Slip opinion regarding propriety of jury verdict so pretty deferential standard of review. Bad shoot where guy joins a street fight by firing into a crowd, hitting a guy in the ass and killling him (femoral artery?). The jury covicts him of depraved indifference murder as opposed to manslaughter. Just like with the murder degree scienter cases, this is just used to rachet a bad shoot up a notch to the next degree of offense. "This is exacerbated by the fact that defendant knowingly used hollow point ammunition in the gun, which causes maximum damage to the body upon impact. Accordingly, defendant's conviction should be affirmed." People v. Jean-Baptiste, 2007 NY Slip Op 2597, 3 (N.Y. App. Div. 2007)



In conclusion, using hollow points doesnt negate the frame of mind necessary for self defense because the law ASSUMES AND ALLOWS that the defender would wish to intentionally inflict severe harm and death upon his attacker. Self defense is a complete justification for a homicide, not a negation of the scienter element which the use of hollow points might be weighed against.

*scienter is the spectrum of intent from neglient to reckless to knowing to purposefully
negligent = not knowing something you should have. like being unaware that using the hair dryer in the shower would be dangerous
reckless = knowing something is very dangerous but ignoring that danger and doinng it anyway. Firing a gun blindly into bushes when you know there are other hunters downrange or choosing to have a 150 mph drag race in a school zone.
knowing = knowing what you are doing when that thing is illegal. For example, possession of a machine gun must be done with the knowledge that it is a machine gun for it to be illegal. Thank you justice thomas.
purposefully = knowing what you are doing is illegal and doing it anyway. For example, tax evasion requires not just that you do something ot avoid paying tax, but that you know that it is against the law to do that thing.

Oh, one other thing that occurred to me after thinking about it is that the judges in these appeals are likely just scrounging around for aggravating factors in the case that could justify the jury's verdict so they can affirm and keep the dirtbag in jail. The judge can't really come out and say "the defendent in this case is a piece of s***, so we affirm," even if this is a mild version of the truth. The case would just end up getting appealed again, wasting everyone's time.

Instead, they have to carefully lay out all the bad things in the record to justify upholding the appellant's conviction. A murderer using hollow point ammo sounds only marginally worse than a murderer using ordinary ammo but every bit helps.

The point that came across to me is that hollow points really are a non issue unless you are in an area that where jurors are incredibly hostile to guns and/or self defense. But then you have a far worse problem that can't be remedied by switching to FMJ. You need to move. BTW, hostile laws arent the same as hostile jurors. Nor are hostile prosecutors for that matter.

Your average prosecutor will happily send an innocent person to prison if it means keeping their conviction rate high, thus securing their political future.
Most prosecutors are not elected officials. The AG of your state usually is, but not any of the prosecutors under him. They aren't involved in politics at all, at least in my state. And the attitude that came across in my post basically reflects the fact that the practice of law isn't just dry presentation of the facts. So much of being a successful prosecutor is your ability to frame evidence and facts creatively within your overall argument. Essentially, the difference between a great lawyer and an average lawyer is in presentation in the courtroom. Doing this and being engaging helps your case and more importantly keeps the jury interested and engaged so they'll actually remember whats being presented.

And no, practicing law this way doesn't send innocent people to jail. You still need the facts on your side to win a case. I'd bet 99% of people in jail are in fact guilty. Of course some are innocent, but thats simply a result of statistics and basic human error.

While it's true that any ammunition is subject to be cast in a bad light, a hollowpoint leaves a prosecutor or civil litigator a little bigger window of opportunity...all else being equal.

All else is never equal. If the prosecutor is trying to make the case on the basis of ammo type used, then s/he doesn't have a valid case.

DNS wrote:

>If the prosecutor is trying to make the case on the basis of ammo type used, then s/he doesn't have a valid case.<
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Don't recall anyone saying that a case could be made based on the ammo...just that it could be twisted and spun into an aggravating factor, when the defendant needs all the mitigating factors that he can get. Juries are sometimes swayed by a single phrase.

You are right in that nobody said the case was being made based on the type of ammo used, sort of, but you also noted that any ammo can be spun in a negative and that juries can be swayed by a single phrase. Obviously, there is an attempt at making a case any way possible, using every possible bit of insight and circumstance. The lawyer pressing the point doesn't care how the case is made, so long as it is made, right? So the lawyer is/will be, in a sense, trying to make the case on any such aspects possible. So if s/he is arguing that hollowpoints are evil, then hollowpoints are being used to try to make the case.

As you note, any ammo can be cast in a negative light. I am not sure that hollowpoints are necessarily easier to cast in a bad light or more perceived in a bad light than other ammo. It just depends on the abilities of the lawyers involved.

Of course, there are cases where lawyers make a big deal out of the color of clothing being worn as well...

The average juror has no idea what any type of bullet is, nor does the average judge or lawyer. If they want to get you (whether deservedly or not), they will spin every fact they possibly can in a negative light.

Get a good lawyer, dont antagonize the DA/cops even if you are in the right and refrain from shooting people whenever possible.

. . . wondering about which ammo to use in my CCW pistol.

So I write a letter to my local PD or SO and ask them, "What type of ammo do your officers carry on duty? What are the factors that affect that policy? What would you recommend for self defense?"

And then, once I have that answer, I file it. I make sure I'm carrying whatever they suggest.

Late at night . . .
Crash! Thump! Stomp, stomp . . .
Hey -- what? -- stop -- no, stop! -- BANG!.
. . .
So, Mr. Homeowner, why is your pistol loaded with hollowpoints?
Well, I asked the police department, and that's what they recommended. They're the experts. I trust their judgement.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me it would be hard for a prosecutor to make "prior intent" out of that.

Hey, I just do what the cops tell me.

Going armed is not, generally speaking, proof of premeditation to commit murder.

Having what you call "prior intent" to defend yourself isnt proof of criminality either and certainly doesnt negate a self defense justification.

But yes, if anyone asks that is the answer I would give. Some cops in the gun store/range said they use this brand. With the AK, I can just say "I bought it beccause it was the cheapest ammo for sale."