Calvin Goddard (Ballistics) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

for others with the same name, see Calvin Goddard

Calvin Goddard

Calvin Goddard was a United States Representative from Connecticut. He was born in Shrewsbury, Worcester County, Massachusetts. He attended Plainfield Academy where he pursued classical studies, and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1786...

Colonel Calvin Hooker Goddard (1891 – 1955) was a forensic scientist, army officer, academic, researcher

Researcher

A researcher is somebody who performs research, the search for knowledge or in general any systematic investigation to establish facts. Researchers can work in academic, industrial, government, or private institutions.-Examples of research institutions:...

and a pioneer in forensic ballistics

Ballistics

Ballistics is the science of mechanics that deals with the flight, behavior, and effects of projectiles, especially bullets, gravity bombs, rockets, or the like; the science or art of designing and accelerating projectiles so as to achieve a desired performance.A ballistic body is a body which is...

. He was born in Baltimore

Baltimore

Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

, Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

. After graduating from the Boys' Latin School of Maryland

Boys' Latin School of Maryland

Boys' Latin School of Maryland is an all-boys, college-preparatory school located in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1844, it is the oldest independent, non-sectarian secondary school in the state of Maryland. The school is divided into Lower, Middle and Upper Schools...

in 1907, Goddard graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1911 from the Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

and then earned a medical degree and graduated in 1915.

Career

He joined the United States Army

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

and became a Colonel. He was also a professor of police science

Police science

Police science is often an ambiguous term that denotes the studies and research which directly or indirectly deal with police work. Studies and research in criminology, forensic science, psychology, jurisprudence, community policing, criminal justice, correctional administration and penology all...

at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

and the Military Editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was also the editor of the American Journal of Police Science, America’s first scientific police journal. Colonel Goddard commanded the US Army Crime Laboratory in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

for a number of years after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Calvin Goddard brought professionalism, the use of the scientific method, and reliability
to Forensic Firearm Identification, at a time when charlatanism was rampant in this field. His testimony

Testimony

In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. All testimonies should be well thought out and truthful. It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on a Bible when taking an oath...

in 1923 in the Frye case and others, paved the way for judicial acceptance of Firearms Identification. According to Goddard's grandson, he may have been the only army officer who served in four branches: Ordnance Corps, Military Police Corps, Medical Corps

Army Medical Department (United States)

The Army Medical Department of the U.S. Army – known as the AMEDD – comprises the Army's six medical Special Branches of officers and medical enlisted soldiers. It was established as the "Army Hospital" in July 1775 to coordinate the medical care required by the Continental Army during the...

and became a Military Historian

Military history

Military history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships....

Forensic Ballistics

In 1925 Goddard wrote an article for the Army Ordnance titled "Forensic Ballistics" in which he described the use of the comparison microscope

Comparison microscope

A comparison microscope is a device used to analyze side-by-side specimens. It consists of two microscopes connected by an optical bridge, which results in a split view window enabling two separate objects to be viewed simultaneously...

regarding firearms investigations. He is generally credited with the conception of the term "forensic ballistics", though he later admitted it to be an inadequate name for the science.
In April 1925, Major

Major

Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

Goddard established the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

with C. E. Waite, Philip O. Gravelle and John H. Fisher. The Bureau was formed to provide firearms identification services throughout America. Goddard researched, authored and spoke extensively on the subject of forensic ballistics and firearms identification, becoming the internationally renowned pioneer in forensic ballistics.
The Bureau of Forensic Ballistics, United States’ first independent criminological laboratory, which Goddard headed, and where ballistics

Ballistics

, fingerprinting, blood analysis and trace evidence

Trace evidence

Trace evidence is evidence that occurs when different objects contact one another. Such materials are often transferred by heat induced by contact friction....

were brought under one roof. When the Lab began publishing the American Journal of Police Science, which was edited by Colonel

Colonel

Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

Goddard, Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover

John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...

strongly encouraged his Special Agents

Special agent

Special agent is usually the title for a detective or investigator for a state, county, municipal, federal or tribal government. An agent is a worker for any federal agency, and a secret agent is one who works for an intelligence agency....

in Charge to subscribe to it and he supplied articles on fingerprint

Fingerprint

A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...

issues and Bureau responsibilities to the journal. The following year the Bureau contributed three articles for the journal’s series entitled “Organized Protection Against Organized Crime

Organized crime

Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...

.” Hoover also sent a number of representatives to a symposium that Goddard sponsored on scientific crime detection. He was also an advisor to FBI when they set up a similar Forensic Laboratory.

Comparison Microscope

Philip O. Gravelle, developed the comparison microscope

Comparison microscope

for the identification of fired bullets and cartridge cases with the support and guidance of Major Calvin H. Goddard. It was a giant leap in the science of firearms identification in forensic science. The firearm from which a bullet or cartridge case has been fired is identified by the comparison of the unique striae left on the bullet or cartridge case from the worn, machined metal of the barrel

Gun barrel

A gun barrel is the tube, usually metal, through which a controlled explosion or rapid expansion of gases are released in order to propel a projectile out of the end at a high velocity....

, breach block, extractor

Extractor (firearms)

An extractor is a part in a firearm that serves to remove brass cases of fired ammunition after the ammunition has been fired. When the gun's action cycles, the extractor lifts or removes the spent brass casing from the firing chamber.-Overview:...

, or firing pin

Firing pin

A firing pin or striker is part of the firing mechanism used in a firearm or explosive device e.g. an M14 landmine or bomb fuze. Firing pins may take many forms, though the types used in landmines, bombs, grenade fuzes or other single-use devices generally have a sharpened point...

in the gun

Gun

A gun is a muzzle or breech-loaded projectile-firing weapon. There are various definitions depending on the nation and branch of service. A "gun" may be distinguished from other firearms in being a crew-served weapon such as a howitzer or mortar, as opposed to a small arm like a rifle or pistol,...

. It was Gravelle who mistrusted his memory. "As long as he could inspect only one bullet at a time with his microscope, and had to keep the picture of it in his memory until he placed the comparison bullet under the microscope, scientific precision could not be attained. He invented the comparison microscope and Goddard made it work."
Sir Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith (forensic expert)

Sir Sydney Alfred Smith CBE , was a renowned forensic scientist and pathologist. From 1928 to 1953, Smith was Regius Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, a well-known forensic department of that time...

also appreciated the idea, emphasizing the importance of stereo-microscope in forensic science and firearms identification. He took the comparison microscope to Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

and introduced it to the European scientists for firearms identification and other forensic uses.

Sacco and Vanzetti Case

Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti were two Italian-born American anarchists, who were arrested for the murder of security guard Alessandro Berardelli and the robbery of US$15,766.51 from the factory's payroll

Payroll

In a company, payroll is the sum of all financial records of salaries for an employee, wages, bonuses and deductions. In accounting, payroll refers to the amount paid to employees for services they provided during a certain period of time. Payroll plays a major role in a company for several reasons...

in South Braintree, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

during the afternoon of April 15, 1920. During the trial

Trial

A trial is, in the most general sense, a test, usually a test to see whether something does or does not meet a given standard.It may refer to:*Trial , the presentation of information in a formal setting, usually a court...

a worldwide outcry arose, with the firm belief based on railroaded justice and racial prejudice.
On April 8, 1927, their appeals exhausted, Sacco and Vanzetti were finally sentenced to death in the electric chair

Electric chair

Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body...

. A worldwide outcry arose and Governor Alvin T. Fuller finally agreed to postpone the executions

Capital punishment

Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

and set up a committee to reconsider the case. By this time, firearms examination had improved considerably, and it was now known that an automatic pistol could be traced by several different methods if both bullet

Bullet

A bullet is a projectile propelled by a firearm, sling, or air gun. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the intended target by impact and penetration...

and casing were recovered from the scene. Automatic pistols could now be traced by unique markings of the rifling on the bullet, by firing pin indentations on the fired primer, or by unique ejector and extractor marks on the casing. The committee appointed to review the case used the services of Major Calvin Goddard in 1927. Major Goddard used Philip Gravelle's newly-invented comparison microscope

Comparison microscope

and helixometer, a hollow, lighted magnifier probe used to inspect gun barrels, to make an examination of Sacco’s .32 Colt, the bullet

Bullet

A bullet is a projectile propelled by a firearm, sling, or air gun. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the intended target by impact and penetration...

that killed allegedly Berardelli, and the spent casings allegedly recovered from the scene of the crime. (Defenders of Sacco and Vanzetti claim that the bullet and cartridge case linked to Sacco's pistol were substituted for genuine evidence by the Massachusetts police.) In the presence of one of the defense experts, he fired several test bullets from Sacco's gun into a wad of cotton and prepared them for a comparative examination. He then put the ejected shell casings on the comparison microscope next to casings recovered at the South Braintree murder scene. Then he analyzed them carefully. The third bullet, designated Bullet III matched the rifling marks found on the barrel of Sacco's .32 Colt, while firing pin marks on a .32 spent casing recovered from the murder scene matched a test shell casing known to have been fired from Sacco's Colt. Even the defense expert agreed that the two cartridges had been fired from the same gun. The second original defense expert also concurred. The committee upheld the convictions. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were found guilty and executed

Capital punishment

via electrocution

Electric chair

in Massachusetts

Massachusetts

on August 23, 1927.

Later Investigations

One piece of evidence supporting the possibility of Sacco's guilt arose in 1941 when anarchist leader Carlo Tresca

Carlo Tresca

Carlo Tresca was an Italian-born American newspaper editor, orator, and labor organizer who was a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World during the decade of the 1910s. Tresca is remembered as a leading public opponent of fascism, stalinism, and Mafia infiltration of the trade union movement...

, a member of the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee, told Max Eastman, "Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent." Eastman published an article recounting his conversation with Tresca in National Review

National Review

National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

in 1961. Later, others would confirm being told the same information by Tresca, but Tresca's daughter insisted she never told him. Others pointed to an ongoing feud between Tresca and the Galleanisti, claiming the famous anarchist was just trying to get even.

In October 1961, ballistics

Ballistics

tests were run with improved technology using Sacco's Colt automatic. The results confirmed that the bullet

Bullet

A bullet is a projectile propelled by a firearm, sling, or air gun. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the intended target by impact and penetration...

that killed Berardelli in 1920 came from the same .32 Colt Auto taken from the pistol in Sacco's possession. Subsequent investigations in 1983 also supported Goddard's findings, however, supporters of innocence have disputed both tests, nothing that ballistics experts conducting the first test had claimed Sacco's guilt even before the tests, and that by the 1980s, the old bullets and guns were far too rusty to prove anything. There was also no evidence Sacco had fired the gun.

The relevance of this evidence was challenged in 1987 when Charlie Whipple, a former Globe

The Globe (tabloid)

Globe is a supermarket tabloid first published North America on November 10, 1954 in Montreal, Canada as Midnight by Joe Azaria and John Vader and became the chief competitor to the National Enquirer during the 1960s. In 1978 it changed its name to the Midnight Globe after its publisher, Globe...

editorial page editor, stated that while working as a reporter back in 1937, he had a conversation with Boston Police Sergeant Edward J. Seibolt. According to Whipple, Seibolt told him that he was part of a "father-and-son ballistics team" who had worked on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, and that "we switched the murder weapon in that case." When Whipple asked why, Seibolt replied "we suspected the other side of switching weapons, so we just switched them back." When Whipple asked if he could print Seibolt's statement, Seibolt replied "If you do, I'll call you a liar." Whipple's story remained unsubstantiated, as Seibolt died in 1961 and never corroborated the story. Moreover, police records indicate that Seibolt was only a Patrolman at the time of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, and did not earn a promotion to Sergeant and a position as a ballistics expert with the Boston Police Department until October 1935. A full transcript

Transcript (law)

A transcript is a written record of spoken language. In court proceedings, a transcript is usually a record of all decisions of the judge, and the spoken arguments by the litigants' lawyers. A related term used in the US is docket, not a full transcript. The transcript is expected to be an exact...

of the hearings, on microfilm at Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

, shows that Judge Webster Thayer made no determination as to who had switched the barrels, but merely ordered the rusty barrel restored to Sacco's pistol.

Sacco's .32 Colt pistol is also claimed to have passed in and out of police custody, and to have been dismantled several times, both in 1924 prior to the gun barrel switch, and again between 1927 and 1961. The main problem with these charges is that the match to Sacco's gun was based not only the .32 Colt pistol, but also to the same-caliber

Caliber

In guns including firearms, caliber or calibre is the approximate internal diameter of the barrel in relation to the diameter of the projectile used in it....

bullet that killed Berardelli, as well as to spent casings found at the scene. In addition to tampering with the pistol, the gun switcher/dismantler would also have had to access police evidence lockers and exchange the bullet from Berardelli's body and all spent casings retrieved by police, or else locate the actual murder weapon, then switch barrel, firing pin, ejector, and extractor, all before Goddard's examination in 1927 when the first match was made to Sacco's gun. However, skeptics of Sacco's guilt have repeatedly pointed to a single anomaly — that several witnesses to the crime insisted the gunman, alleged to be Sacco, fired four bullets into Berardelli. "He shot at Berardelli probably four or five times," one witness said. "He stood guard over him.” If this was true, many ask, how could only one of the fatal bullets be linked to Sacco's gun? In 1927, the defense

Defense (legal)

In civil proceedings and criminal prosecutions under the common law, a defendant may raise a defense in an attempt to avoid criminal or civil liability...

raised the suggestion that the fatal bullet had been planted, calling attention to the awkward scratches on the base of the bullet that differed from those on other bullets. The Lowell Commission dismissed this claim as desperate but in 1985, historians William Kaiser and David Young made a compelling case for a switch in their book "Post-Mortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti."

St. Valentine's Day Massacre

On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929, St. Valentine's Day, seven men were killed by mobsters dressed as Chicago police officers in a garage on the North side of Chicago; six of them were gang members and a doctor who happened to be at the scene. The hit

Contract killing

Contract killing is a form of murder, in which one party hires another party to kill a target individual or group of people. It involves an illegal agreement between two parties in which one party agrees to kill the target in exchange for consideration, monetary, or otherwise. The hiring party may...

was initiated by Al "Scarface" Capone

Al Capone

Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...

, gangster who led a crime syndicate dedicated to the illegal traffic

Smuggling

Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...

of alcoholic beverages

Moonshine

Moonshine is an illegally produced distilled beverage...

during the time of their prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. Al Capone cleverly made an alibi

Alibi

Alibi is a 1929 American crime film directed by Roland West. The screenplay was written by West and C. Gardner Sullivan, who adapted the 1927 Broadway stage play, Nightstick, written by Elaine Sterne Carrington, J.C...

by going to Miami when his assassins

Assassination

To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...

hit the rival gang led by George "Bugs" Moran.
Colonel Goddard was the key forensic expert in solving the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre

St. Valentine's Day massacre

The Saint Valentine's Day massacre is the name given to the 1929 murder of 7 mob associates as part of a prohibition era conflict between two powerful criminal gangs in Chicago: the South Side Italian gang led by Al Capone and the North Side Irish gang led by Bugs Moran. Former members of the...

in which seven gangsters were killed by rival . It was also led to the establishment of The Bureau of Forensic Ballistics, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

’ first independent criminological laboratory, at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Trivia

Goddard had originally offered his services to the defense, who had rejected his assistance, continuing to rely on Hamilton's testimony which they felt best fit their view of the case.
The relationship between the FBI and Goddard began with contention but quickly became cooperative. By the summer of 1935, though, this cordial relationship faded again.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Career

Forensic Ballistics

Comparison Microscope

Sacco and Vanzetti Case

Later Investigations

St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Trivia

See also

Further reading

External links