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Proving Self-Defense: Gunshot Wound Analysis in Crime Scene Reconstruction
By Louis L. Akin
In New Mexico v. Garcia,1 criminal defense attorney Lelia “Lee” Hood was
faced with the unnerving challenge of trying to save an innocent person
from a zealous prosecutor — not an altogether unique mission for a
veteran criminal defense attorney, but a perilous one still. Her client,
Jimmy Garcia, had shot and killed the wrong man to kill in New Mexico —
a Bandido, a member of the notorious outlaw motorcycle gang dominant in
that state. Because of the inferior investigative abilities of the
local police and the precarious position in which it put the local
prosecutor (putting Garcia on trial or being accused by the Bandidos of
letting a killer go), Jimmy Garcia was facing a death sentence. It was
not an official death sentence; New Mexico had repealed the death
penalty. But the New Mexico state prisons were populated with Bandidos
and if Jimmy Garcia was sentenced to one, it would be tantamount to an
execution.
Danger lurked at the courthouse for Jimmy Garc
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