So let’s examine how the jury trial itself can err.
Juries weigh evidence differently than logic would dictate. Facts, figures, graphs, and experts convey information, but may confuse the jury. Eyewitnesses and vivid descriptions grab attention and sympathy, but often convey no new information. Juries will convict on the basis of eyewitness testimony two-thirds of the time, even if the only witness wasn’t wearing his glasses. Without a witness, they convict only one-sixth of the time.* A jury is more likely to believe a confident witness than a hesitant one, even though tests prove that confidence does not correlate with witness accuracy. Juries might acquit due to sympathy. And they’re more likely to convict if the crime was particularly horrendous, even if it’s not clear who committed it.
Forensic analysis is a clash between science and emotion. We have a huge array of tools for analyzing the tiniest shreds of evidence: bloodstains, fibers, bullets, and even repressed memories. At the same time, these are only tools. They can be used for justice or injustice. They can clarify the facts, or simply muddy the waters. Cutting through the gory details and tech-talk still requires a dispassionate, intelligent human mind—the first, last, and only tool we’ve ever had for achieving justice.
A jury trial is one potential payoff for the misuse of a weapon, but an even more formidable trial is that of natural selection. In the following stories, misused weapons themselves act as judge and jury to mete out their own form of justice….
DARWIN AWARD: SURPRISE ATTACK SURPRISE
Confirmed by Darwin
3 JANUARY 2005, ST. MAURICE IM WALLIS, SWITZERLAND
It was the first week of a weapons refresher course, and Swiss Army Grenadier Detachment 20/5 had just finished training with live ammunition. The shooting instructor ordered the soldiers to secure their weapons for a break.
The twenty-four-year-old second lieutenant in charge of this detachment decided this would be a good time to demonstrate a knife attack on a soldier. Wielding his bayonet, he leapt toward one of his men, achieving complete surprise.
But earlier that week, the soldiers had been drilled to release the safety catch and ready their guns for firing in the shortest possible time. The surprised soldier, seeing his lieutenant leaping toward him with a knife, snapped off a shot to protect himself from the attack.
The lesson could not have been more successful: The soldier had saved himself and protected the rest of the detachment from a surprise attack. The lieutenant might have wished to commend his soldier on his quick action and accurate marksmanship. Unfortunately, he had been killed with one shot.
And this, kiddies, is why we don’t play with knives or guns. Ever. Even if we are trained professionals, and especially if our target is a trained professional.
Reference: Blick
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READER COMMENTS:
“No one brings knives to paintball this weekend!!!”
“That’s what he gets for bringing a knife to a gun fight!”
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DARWIN AWARD: EXPLODING EX-TORTIONIST
Confirmed by Darwin
7 SEPTEMBER 2003, PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA
Khim, nicknamed “The Big Giant,” was an intimidatingly large former military policeman when he arrived at the home of a drug dealer to extort money and amphetamines. He was a much smaller man soon afterward.
He pulled the pin from a grenade to threaten the dealer, who immediately decided to give him the items he demanded. Then Khim, who had been drinking, forgot to put the pin back before slipping the grenade into his pocket.
He walked to his motorbike, well satisfied with the transaction. As he climbed aboard, the grenade exploded. Whether the drug dealer recovered his cash (and in what condition!) is unknown.
Reference: AAP, news.com.au, The Daily News (South Africa)
DARWIN AWARD: SHOOTING BLANKS
Confirmed by Darwin
11 MARCH 2003, MADRID, SPAIN
Early one morning, police received a call. Three robbers had invaded a brothel! Officers surrounded the building and used a bullhorn to coax the offenders from the premises.
The robbers were understandably frightened to be surrounded by dozens of policemen. But instead of surrendering, they decided to go out in a blaze of glory, and fled the building while shooting at everything in sight. The policemen ducked, covered, and shot back. Two running robbers were fatally injured, and the third was wounded.
Why was the gunfight over so quickly? The three robbers were carrying REAL guns loaded with FAKE ammunition. They were firing blanks, making enough flash and thunder to fool the police into shooting back, but not enough to actually help them escape.
Reference: www.terra.es, Terra Networks, South America
HONORABLE MENTION: SHOOT ’EM OFF
Confirmed by Darwin
7 MAY 2002, WISCONSIN
“For being named Lantern, he sure wasn’t very bright.”
Lantern, thirty, enjoyed playing a private game with his wife. He would pull down his pants, place the barrel of a shotgun against his scrotum, and tell her to pull the trigger. They had played this game frequently, to his immense pleasure. The gun was unloaded, of course.
On this pleasant Friday, he was excited to try again. The thrill was even larger because his wife’s girlfriend was pulling into the driveway at the time. “Shoot ’em off before she gets here!” Lantern told his wife. She pulled the trigger. But this time, the gun was loaded.
Emergency crews arrived to find Lantern bleeding profusely from his groin, wearing shoes and socks, with his pants down around his ankles. The police were told it was an accident, and the couple didn’t know the gun was loaded. Lantern was admitted to the hospital in critical condition, where he survived, possibly earning the right to the rarest of honors: the Living Darwin Award. We await confirmation of his procreative status.
Reference: Green Bay Press-Gazette
DARWIN AWARD: SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROBBERY
Unconfirmed by Darwin
12 FEBRUARY 2003, THE NETHERLANDS
Three men wielding knives tried to rob a slaughterhouse (for what, we wonder). But when it comes to hand-to-hand combat with sharp blades, butchers working in a slaughterhouse are more than a match for your average knife-wielding thief. They stabbed two of the intruders to death. The third man escaped from the angry butchers and fled in his car.
Police soon spotted him, and after a brief car chase, the would-be thief pulled over and leapt from his vehicle. But instead of fleeing into the underbrush, he tried to dodge heavy traffic and escape across the highway. Perhaps he thought that threatening butchers with knives was not a sufficient demonstration of his intelligence.
Within seconds, the natural justice system meted out his punishment in the form of a large truck, which struck and killed him.
Reference: Eyewitness account
DARWIN AWARD: SHARP LANDING
Unconfirmed by Darwin
FEBRUARY 2003, DILI, EAST TIMOR
“A do-it-yourself briss (circumcision).”
A man was found lying facedown, covered in mud and blood, the apparent victim of a street crime. It was not until a post-mortem examination was conducted that U.N. police were able to reconstruct his last moments, based on an unusual discovery in his pants.
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Safety Tip: If you’re ever stuck with a knife, DON’T PULL IT OUT! It may be painful, but it’s acting as a plug for your wound. Pull the knife out, and you’re left with a hole ready to leak whatever’s inside out.
* * *
This up-and-coming young man decided it was cool to shove his weapons, two long knives, down the waistband of his trousers. Unsheathed. The hapless fellow jumped over a small fence and landed in a large puddle of mud. He slipped, which sent the blade of his “trouser knife” into his leg and severed his femoral artery. This has the same effect as cutting off the bottom of a paper cup filled with water. In thirty seconds, one loses enough blood to be rendered unconscious, with nearly complete blood loss within tw
o minutes. He bled to death before he could stagger ten feet from the puddle.
HONORABLE MENTION:
NIGHTTIME FUN WITH BULLETS
Confirmed by Darwin
25 MARCH 2005, SALINA, KANSAS
“At the time, he was uncooperative,” said the Saline County sheriff, describing the difficulty deputies encountered in finding the cause of a self-inflicted bullet wound. Perhaps Lou, the twenty-seven-year-old victim of his inner klutz, was simply embarrassed to admit he had managed to shoot himself in the groin with a .22-caliber bullet—while armed only with a pellet gun.
The deputy’s report included no mention of alcohol, so Lou was apparently sober when he placed a bullet on a picnic table and fired at it with his air rifle. The results he expected are not known. But the experiment yielded conclusive data. As he eventually, and abashedly, explained to a detective, “a pellet from the rifle hit the shell, causing it to explode.”
The bullet shot into his groin, fragmenting into an area rich with major nerves and arteries, thereby presenting an interesting challenge to Kansas City neurosurgeons. They were up to the task, and Lou was thereby deprived of winning a full Darwin Award…this time!
Reference: Salina Journal
HONORABLE MENTION: BAKED BULLET SURPRISE
Confirmed by Darwin
17 FEBRUARY 2004, HOWARD, WISCONSIN
Just as squirrels bury their acorns to protect them from predators for later use, a man from Howard put his ammunition and three handguns in a safe place before he and his wife departed on vacation. He wanted to be sure they would be there when the couple returned. But just as squirrels frequently forget where they buried a particular acorn, the man forgot that his hiding place was the oven. When they returned from their trip, his wife turned on the oven to prepare dinner. Shortly afterward the couple had to duck behind the refrigerator as the bullets began to explode like popcorn. The husband used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire that the bullets started in the oven. No humans were hurt, but the prognosis for the oven was grim.
Reference: Minneapolis Star Tribune
HONORABLE MENTION: SELF-PROTECTION
Confirmed by Darwin
28 NOVEMBER 2004, IDAHO
Police found Camero lying on the floor behind his bar, bleeding from a gunshot wound. A .22-caliber revolver lay on the floor nearby. The cash register was open, but the cash was undisturbed. It appeared that the bar owner had bravely fended off a robbery attempt—but looks can be deceiving!
Actually, the man had brought his gun along for protection when he unloaded the Saturday-night revenue from the cash register. Camero had trouble getting the register drawer open, so he tucked the gun under his arm and applied a bit more force. The gun slipped, hit the floor, and shot him through the groin, narrowly missing his reproductive organs and his heart before lodging in his right chest cavity.
But at least the cash was safe!
4 AUGUST 2004, OKLAHOMA
In a similar incident, law enforcement officers called off their search for an escaped prisoner in order to help a gunshot victim. The victim had been carrying a .22-caliber pistol in the waistband of his cutoff jeans to protect himself from an escaped prisoner he had heard about. To be extra safe, he had pulled back the hammer of the gun before putting it into his pants. The gun went off and shot him in the left buttock. The victim admitted that the incident was “one of my most embarrassing moments.” The escapee remained at large.
Reference: Spokane Spokesman-Review, AP
HONORABLE MENTION:
TESTOSTERONE, CHICKENS, AND GUNS
Confirmed by Darwin
10 DECEMBER 2004, WASHINGTON
Not far from the Eastern Washington State Hospital for the mentally handicapped, Donnie, an eighteen-year-old A student in gun-safety classes, decided to impress his girlfriend with his coyote hunting skills. He needed a live chicken as bait. So, girlfriend in one hand and .22-caliber rifle in the other, he entered the butchering barn where carefree chickens roamed.
You never know how a mix of testosterone, chickens, and guns will turn out. There are so many variables.
Donnie climbed into the attic, intending to use the stock of the rifle as a club. He swung the rifle at a fluttering fowl, but the rafters got in the way. The gun butt hit the ceiling and discharged, sending a bullet into his right forearm and out the elbow. He didn’t realize he had shot himself until he noticed his right hand twitching, and took his coat off for a closer look.
Donnie shared the lesson he learned: “To know you shot yourself and came close to dying, it’s a pretty scary deal. You’ve gotta be careful with guns.”
Reference: Spokane Spokesman-Review
PERSONAL ACCOUNT: VILLAGE IDIOT
2003, CALIFORNIA
I am what is known as a “Rennie,” or Renaissance fair participant. We are a close-knit bunch, and nobody’s secrets are safe for long. So it’s no secret who the village idiot is. When God was passing out brains, Tim must have thought he said “trains” and requested HO scale. Really.
Because it’s a Renaissance festival, we sell what we refer to as “sharp pointy things.” Several booths are dedicated to knives and swords of all sorts. At one particular booth, Knightware, they sell sharp little throwing knives called spiders. Larger blades are not sold with a live edge for safety reasons; however, small knives are not only sharpened, but usually better made.
A customer who was interested in blades came across the Knightware spiders. When he asked if they were sharp, Tim replied, “No, look,” and drove the one-inch blade straight into his chest with all the force he could muster.
If it had been a cheap knife, it would have come out easily, but the well-made little blade lodged tight in Tim’s sternum. Tim was driven to the hospital, where the spider was removed. He was subsequently billed for the knife, on the grounds that no one else wanted to buy a knife with its bloodthirsty history.
Tim was taken back to the hospital two weeks later to stitch his thumb together. He had been sharpening his new knife when it slipped, and he cut himself down to the bone. Tim is now banned from all weapons stalls, although he doesn’t understand why.
Reference: Personal Account
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Most “Renfaires” require weapons to be “peace tied” to prevent injury.
More information on this story:
www.DarwinAwards.com/book/rennie.html
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PERSONAL ACCOUNT: GUN-SAFETY NONSENSE
MID-1980S, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
I worked with a man who taught hunting skills and gun safety after hours. He came to work one day visibly shaken and told this story.
As his teenage students gathered around him, he warned them not to trust the safety switch of the gun, telling them that it could fail. One of the students did not show up for class for the next few weeks, and then came in (the night before I heard this story) to tell the instructor how his father had died. The student had gone home after his last class, and told his father about not trusting the safety. The father became irate that the instructor would teach such nonsense. He proceeded to load a rifle, flip the safety on, and hit the butt of the stock on the floor to prove the instructor wrong. Unfortunately, the instructor turned out to be right, while the father was fatally mistaken. The gun went off and killed the man.
Reference: Personal Account
PERSONAL ACCOUNT:
DO WHAT I SAY, NOT WHAT I DO
CA. 1961, USA
When I was a Boy Scout, one of our troop leaders decided to teach us how to use an axe safely. Of course, this was after we were shown how to sharpen an axe to a razor edge. A dull blade is the most dangerous weapon.
The safety demonstration was going well until he decided to show us how dangerous it would be to strike a log with a glancing blow. We all watched in amazement as he took a mighty swing with the axe and struck the log with a glancing blow. The axe bounced off the log and buried itself in his left kneecap. Since it was summertime and he was wearing sh
orts, this turned out to be a very graphic demonstration.
Fortunately, he missed all major arteries, but he did chop his kneecap in half and had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. He walked with a limp after that. It was the best demonstration of axe safety I ever saw.
Reference: John Stein, Personal Account; Blick
The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design Page 15