Two boys played hooky from their rural high school and went on crime binge riding a stolen ATV through the open range of Southern Arizona burglarizing remote houses where no one was at home. Besides the ATV, they stole anything of value they could carry with them. At one of the houses, they stole a loaded high caliber revolver.
As they were driving the ATV north along the east base of the Dragoon Mountains, they chanced to cross the road that leads to Cochise Stronghold National Monument. As they paused, a car came along and the driver asked if he could help the boys. One pulled the gun and ordered him out of the car. The driver was a Baptist preacher on the way to a church retreat. He exited the car and the kid with the gun demanded his wallet, which the preacher produced. The boy then ordered him to get in his car and leave.
The preacher drove off as instructed, but a few hundred yards up the road, he decided to turn around and return to preach to the boys and save them from their evil ways. Meanwhile, the boys were rifling through his wallet and throwing everything but the cash onto the ground. When the preacher pulled up and got out of his car, the kid with the gun drew it and shot the preacher between the eyes.
The two boys then got into his car and sped off. They turned up toward Interstate 10 and then east toward New Mexico, but they ran out of gas before they got out of Arizona.
I was called out and responded to the scene of the murder. In processing the items from the wallet, I developed a beautiful full pattern latent print on one of the credit cards that had been tossed aside. That was the only latent print of value that I developed at the scene, including on the ATV that was recovered there.
Meanwhile, the preacher’s next of kin provided information on the car and it was entered into NCIC. It was soon recovered where it had run out of gas. The vehicle was towed to DPS headquarters in Tucson where I processed it for prints. I recovered a good latent print from the chrome shaft of the shifter mounted on the steering column.
The boys were arrested a couple of days later hitchhiking in Texas. One was 16 and one was 17. They waived extradition on the charge of first-degree murder and were returned to Arizona. I identified the latent from the credit card to the 17 year old and the latent from the shifter to the 16 year old.
What made this case unusual is that there was no way to prove which boy had shot the preacher. Expecting that at trial each would blame the other, the prosecutor filed a motion to try the two boys together, which would make it harder for each to blame the other.
The boys had separate attorneys, of course, and both attorneys objected to a joint trial. The decision of the judge was to empanel two juries, one for the 16 year old being tried as an adult, the second jury for the 17 year old being tried as an adult, but hold only one trial. That way, each jury got to hear the whole story, including any conflicting testimony if the boys decided to testify.
At trial, the prosecutor led me through direct testimony, then the first defense attorney cross examined me and I addressed my answers to that boy’s jury. Then the second defense attorney cross examined me and I addressed my answers to the other jury.
Neither admitted to being the shooter, although we suspected the older boy. The gun was never recovered. Both boys were convicted and received long prison sentences, but as I recall, the sentence assessed to the 17 year old was longer.