Phil Goodwin
Senior Reporter - St Ives & Hayle
The Cornishman

A St Ives locksmith was convicted of killing a badger after an forensic weapons expert matched his rifle to a bullet found in the animal.

Michael Robert Pierce, of Love Lane, denied willfully shooting the protected animal, at Penderleath caravan park at Towednack last year, saying a chronic back problem had kept him from hunting.

After two days of detailed and conflicting ballistics evidence from two scientific experts, magistrates at Truro ruled that his CZ .22-calibre rifle had fired the fatal shot.

The 57-year-old faced two charges under the 1992 Protection of Badgers Act: that he unlawfully killed the animal and used a firearm and ammunition insufficiently powerful to do so humanely.

He was fined Ł300, ordered to pay Ł1930 in costs and forfeited his rifle and gun licence on Tuesday.

Julian Herbert, prosecuting, said after the trial that he believed the sentence would ‘send out a message that this sort of behaviour towards badgers will not be tolerated’.

Early in the morning of September 23, park co-owner Christopher Maskell found the dying badger while walking his dog near the Cornish hedge bordering Chy and Bal Farm.

Police wildlife officer, Simon Dobson took the corpse to a government laboratory in Truro for a mortem examination the following day.

Veterinary investigation officer Adrian Colloff found a bullet lodged in the abdomen, which was later identified as a .22 calibre round.

Sgt Dobson then scoured the database of gun licences for local shooters with permission to hunt in the area who owned similar rifles.

Pierce, a firearms licence holder, had written consent to shoot rabbits on the 80-acre estate from farm owner Mary Osborne - and had hunted there for ten years.

In March Sgt Dobson seized a CZ rifle from Pierce’s home, later using it to fire test rounds at Helston Gunsmiths, which were subsequently analysed by ballistic experts.

Scientist Philip Boyce, of Key Forensics in Warrington, compared the bullet recovered from the animal with the test rounds and said the rifling characteristics proved conclusively that it had been fired by the same gun.

"This bullet came from that rifle and no other," he told the court. "In fact I have matched bullets up before with an awful lot less detail."

Pierce, a diabetic who never hunted alone but always shot with friend Trevening Harry, said his arrest in April had been like a bolt from the blue.

Describing himself as a ‘good citizen’ who subscribed to Greenpeace, he claimed he ‘enjoyed wildlife immensely’ - only hunting for food and never for sport.

He said that at the time of the offence he had been on crutches and effectively unable to walk, let alone carry guns, lamps and bags over rugged ground.

"I have never, ever killed or knowingly aimed at a badger," he said. "If I want to shoot for recreation I use targets or clay pigeons."

"My job is a position of trust and I wouldn't do anything to jeopardise that or my shooting certificate."

A statement from April Brooks of the St Ives Society of Artists said she saw Pierce using a walking stick in September and a Penzance osteopath confirmed his appointment weeks later.

Following information from the defence, police seized a second CZ rifle, belonging to licensed shooter William Rowe, and this was subjected to testing.

After formal charges were brought, Pierce commissioned a second expert opinion from Andre Horne of LGC Forensics in Leeds.

Mr Horne later declared comparisons between the bullet in the badger and test firings from both rifles to be ‘inconclusive’ adding that he could also not rule either out.

"I failed to see any consistently reproduced markings just random similarities in bullets from both rifles - when you call an identification it has to be better than that," he said.

Defending, Charles Hart, said there were four or five people shooting the land but the investigation trail had gone dead once the incriminating ballistic report arrived.

"From then on Sergeant Dobson was paying lip service to the investigation because he thought he had got his man," he said.

Sgt Dobson said it had been a "complex and involved case" and he had acted on evidence showing a perfect conclusive match.

"Badgers are protected in law and cases like this are positive way to demonstrate this to the public" he said.

Robert Speechley, of Cornwall Badger Rescue, who attended the trial, said he hoped the ruling ‘would make people think twice before shooting protected species’.

"We believe there are many badgers being killed in illegal ways but we rarely find them and it is unusual to see a case with such good evidence as this one."

A single rifle shot fired across Penwith farmland led to a courtroom tussle between leading forensic experts worthy of the TV series Crime Scene Investigations.

Following a year-long police operation, evidence gleaned from the macroscopic analysis of two rifles and a clutch of bullets was finally presented to magistrates - complete with props.

Prosecution expert Philip Boyce, of Key Forensics - a commended senior scientist in Northern Ireland during the Troubles - was commissioned to match the question bullet from the dead badger to those fired by a weapon seized by police.

Mr Boyce, a veteran of investigations in Iraq and Afghanistan, scrutinised the six right-hand twists imprinted on the blood and tissue-stained .22 subsonic bullet from the badger, referred to as exhibit SAD9.

After painstaking analysis he declared it to bear almost identical markings to the five hollow point bullets test fired from Mr Pierce’s gun into a cotton-wool-filled catching box at Helston Gunsmiths.

Despite one quarter of the surface of each slug having been obscured by damage sustained on impact, he said there was sufficient evidence to conclude that the animal could only have been killed by the Pierce rifle - SAD 10.

"A rifle barrel has got grooves inside which impart spin - the bullet takes on this fine detail in the form of a series of unique marks or striations," he told the court.

"Each barrel has individual characteristics and as it wears it becomes more unique - these characteristics can be brought back to show a link."

In line with lab protocol, two peer reviews carried out by fellow scientists and equally experienced professionals confirmed his conclusions.

Unhappy that just one weapon had been seized the defence suggested police analyse the .22 weapon of another known local shooter and licence holder.

An identical model of the CZ, owned by William Richard Rowe, was sent to Mr Boyce’s Key Forensics lab in Warrington for comparison, exhibit SAD25.

This weapon was ruled out by Mr Boyce after test firings did not match bullet SAD9.

The defence drafted in a second firearms expert, former South African policeman Andre Horne, from LGC Forensics in Leeds, his first court appearance for the defence in 14 years.

Mr Horne, an FBI-trained practitioner, cast doubt on the findings and refused to rule in or out either Pierce’s or Rowe’s gun.

Using a large plastic bullet and rifle barrel interior he explained his method of identification, as recommended by the Association of Firearms and Tool manufacturers.

He searched the test-fired bullets until marks were found which are persistently and consistently produced by the rifle in question

Only when these individual characteristics have been isolated is the question bullet checked for a match.

But only a match better than ‘the best known non-match’ -that is between bullets known to have been fired by the gun lead to a positive identification.

Mr Horne said: "I could not possibly call it a positive identification - the big markings were nowhere to be seen on the question bullet so I had to call it as inconclusive"

Speaking during a break in the case on Tuesday he revealed that it was extremely rare for himself and Mr Boyce to disagree, which he felt was significant enough to cast reasonable doubt.

But after deliberation the magistrates opted to side with the first report by Mr Boyce and ruled that it had been the Pierce rifle which had fired the shot.