I have several people, including Miguel, send me various versions of this story.

St. Louis prosecutor ordered crime lab to reassemble Patricia McCloskey’s gun
Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Hinckley stated in charging documents that the gun was “readily capable of lethal use”

The gun Patricia McCloskey waved at protesters was inoperable when it arrived at the St. Louis police crime lab, but a member of Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s staff ordered crime lab experts to disassemble and reassemble it and wrote that it was “readily capable of lethal use” in charging documents filed Monday, 5 On Your Side has learned.

In Missouri, police and prosecutors must prove that a weapon is “readily” capable of lethal use when it is used in the type of crime with which the McCloskeys have been charged.

Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Hinckley ordered crime lab staff members to field strip the handgun and found it had been assembled incorrectly. Specifically, the firing pin spring was put in front of the firing pin, which was backward, and made the gun incapable of firing, according to documents obtained by 5 On Your Side.

Firearms experts then put the gun back together in the correct order and test-fired it, finding that it worked, according to the documents.

Their attorney, Joel Schwartz, confirmed to 5 On Your Side that the McCloskeys intentionally misplaced the firing pin on the gun and that it was in that condition when Patricia McCloskey waved it at protesters and turned it into their former attorney Al Watkins.

“It’s disheartening to learn that a law enforcement agency altered evidence in order to prosecute an innocent member of the community,” Schwartz said.

The McCloskeys claim the rendered the gun inoperable so they could use it as a prop during a lawsuit against a gun manufacturer.

I looked up the Missouri statute 571.030 – Unlawful use of weapons.  This is what is says:

571.030. 1. A person commits the crime of unlawful use of weapons if he or she knowingly:

(1) Carries concealed upon or about his or her person a knife, a firearm, a blackjack or any other weapon readily capable of lethal use

3. Subdivisions (1), (5), (8), and (10) of subsection 1 of this section do not apply when the actor is transporting such weapons in a nonfunctioning state or in an unloaded state when ammunition is not readily accessible or when such weapons are not readily accessible.

5. Subdivisions (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), and (10) of subsection 1 of this section shall not apply to persons who are engaged in a lawful act of defense pursuant to section 563.031, RSMo.

Jumping over to 563.031:

563.031. Use of force in defense of persons. — 1. A person may, subject to the provisions of subsection 2 of this section, use physical force upon another person when and to the extent he or she reasonably believes such force to be necessary to defend himself or herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful force by such other person

I am not a lawyer.  I will fully admit that.  But my dad was a lawyer and he wanted me to follow in his footsteps, and he taught me to think like a lawyer.

Lawyer think is very different than regular people think.

For regular people, the argument “they assembled the gun incorrectly and it didn’t work so when they used it to warn off trespassing rioters it’s wasn’t readily capable of lethal use, therefore not guilty.”  Boom, slamdunk.

If we are lucky, a judge might agree to that and dismiss the case.

I also agree that rendering an inoperable gun operable by the crime lab is some evidence tampering fuckery, but that is part and parcel for being a prosecutor.

There are no more unethical scum in the legal field than prosecutors.  It takes being a prosecutor to strike a plea deal that lets a pedophile who raped 60 kids off with a warning but will hammer an honest, tax-paying, citizen to the fucking wall with a maximum prison sentence for inadvertently violating some minor statutory regulation.

Steal a bunch of guns and sell them illegally on the street, misdemeanor.   Get caught carrying but forgot to renew your concealed carry permit, 10 fucking years.

Don’t tell me that they took that job because they are interested in justice.  They take too much pleasure in building a reputation for being a hardass, which necessarily requires them to collect scalps.  Being soft on good people who screw up a little bit doesn’t net them the reputation that they want.  Ruining peoples’ lives does.

Prosecutors are lazy bullies, they love to torture the weak.  They love to kick the shit out of scared citizens who try to be law-abiding but screw up because they are compliant and want to be good law-abiding citizens.  Actual factual hardened criminals don’t cower before prosecutors, so they get no pleasure out of it and try to make those cases disappear with plea deals as fast as possible.

But I digress…

There is more to this situation than the above, regular people argument.

Part of the problem is “readily capable of lethal use” is not defined.

If you are a manufacturer or dealer and want to display your new gun at SHOT show or NRA AM, you can’t just put the firing pin spring in front of the firing pin and call it good.  You have to remove the firing pin or striker completely or grind it down so that it’s too short and dull to work.  Trust me.  I have done this first hand.

Courthouses are secure locations.  I do not know if Missouri states by law what constitutes as inoperable for a firearm, but if this gun wasn’t rendered inoperable enough to be brought into a courtroom than that could be an argument that the gun was “readily capable of lethal use.”

Now for even more legal mind fuck arguments.

The prosecutor could claim that the intent of Patricia McCloskey is what matters.  She waved that gun about to defend herself.  Why use it if she knew it was inoperable?

If she really was in fear for her life than having a working gun was vital.  Pulling out a non-functioning gun is useless because she wouldn’t have been able to actually defend herself if she had to.  The only reason for pulling out an inoperable gun was to intimidate people with it.

If a judge doesn’t dismiss this and the prosecutor manages to stack the jury in her favor during the voir dire process with likeminded people, they might buy that argument and the McCloskeys could be fucked.

This is not the slam dunk that you think it is.  This is the vaguery that prosecutors love to roll around in like a pig in shit that gives them the advantage.