In the end, James Storey’s lengthy testimony Monday in the Tracy Crews murder trial could have been boiled down to a single nugget for the jury.
Shell casings found inside Crews’ city residence in September 2008 were ballistically matched to a 9 mm luger that was found stashed on a nearby garage. Storey, a former state police lieutenant and the detective who conducted ballistics tests on the shell casings in 2009, talked extensively about striation patterns and used a lot of other fancy terminology before supplying his succinct expert opinion.
The two spent shell casings found inside Crews’ home were “in fact, discharged from within the firearm” that was found near the murder scene. At times, Storey’s testimony was tedious, laborious and hard to follow. It was also interrupted when fire alarms sounded inside the county courthouse, prompting a short evacuation.
The delay was one of several during the day as state offices didn’t open until 10:30 a.m. because of a two-hour delay in anticipation of a severe snow storm. Trial testimony didn’t start until shortly after 11 a.m. because some jurors were late getting to the courthouse.
Storey’s testimony picked back up after lunch with him describing the process he used to match two spent shell casings to test shell casings he fired using the same 9 mm luger prosecutors said was used in Crews’ murder.
Storey said he fired test rounds into a water tank before comparing “striation patterns,” or scratch marks left by the handgun’s firing pin on the shell casings’ primer area, under a microscope. He said the half-crescent moon shape on the test shell casings matched two spent shell casings, bearing a manufacturer’s headstamp, Fiocchi, in all caps, that Trenton Police found inside Crews’ home.
The prosecutor, Al Garcia, showed the jury photographs of side-by-side comparisons of the shell casings on an overhead projector. The black-and-white photos resembled ultrasound scans, with Storey using a green laser pointer to point out patterns for the panel.
The judge, Andrew Smithson dismissed the jury for the day after the defense stipulated to testimony from a detective who took a buccal swab of defendant William Brown’s cheek.
The state used the DNA swab to tie Brown, who is being tried alongside Nigel Joseph Dawson for Crews murder, to a ski mask prosecutors say was used in the crime. Brown’s attorney has said the ski mask belonged to his client, but that someone else’s DNA was also found on it.
The state has not offered an explanation for the presence of a second person’s DNA, nor has it attempted to identify that person, defense attorneys have said. Defense attorneys believe it might belong to someone who conspired with Crews’ wife, Sheena Robinson-Crews, in her husband’s murder.
The defense was scheduled to conduct a teleconference with Muncy inmate, Maria Cappelli, on Monday as part of a compromise it reached with the state to avoid a possible mistrial after a report emerged two weeks into trial suggesting Robinson-Crews ordered a hit on her husband.
Cappelli told a Pennsylvania prison official in 2013 that Robinson-Crews admitted handing the killers keys and instructed them to pick a time for the murder — an acount that was deemed unreliable by the lead Trenton Police detective who investigated Crews’ murder.
Robinson-Crews was serving time at Muncy on a drug conviction at the time she reportedly confessed to Cappelli.
Cappelli’s relationship to Robinson-Crews remains unclear other than that they were housed at the same prison facility. The judge has raised concerns about Cappelli’s credibility, but defense attorneys said they had information indicating Cappelli was possibly a certified informant for the Department of Corrections.
Testimony resumes Tuesday at 9 a.m.