Feds fail to get conviction on homemade zip gun, settle for ammo charge

if they can't hang you with what they want, they'll find something.

Gotta keep the conviction rate up.  Get krimminals off the streets.  Guess they shouldn't be looking in the mirror then.

via Al dot com

Law enforcement officials were not quite sure what to make of the homemade gun that was in Richard Douglas Durham’s bag when Alabama State Troopers pulled him over in May on his way to a motorcycle club meeting in Mobile.

It had a handle wrapped in leather straps protruding from the front of a leather glove and a cylindrical, metal tube coming out the other side. It had no trigger.


Troopers pulled Durham’s motorcycle over on May 16 on Interstate 65 in Baldwin County as he was on his way to a meeting of the Pistoleros. Tiemann said an acquaintance gave Durham the device.
“He didn’t fool with it, so he didn’t know what it was,” Tiemann said.

The man who gave Durham the weapon was never charged. Investigators said that they tried but failed to locate him.

Tiemann said his client believes that the man who gave him the gun set him up. The trooper denied that, testifying that he pulled the motorcycle over after Durham failed to signal a lane change. Finding the gun and ammo was just a coincidence, he testified.

Although the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on those counts, Durham was not in the clear.
Prosecutors did get a conviction on a third charge: possession of ammunition by a convicted felon. Testimony indicated that troopers found 2 shells from a 12-gauge shotgun in Durham’s bag and another shell inside one of the fingers of the glove.