Lies about credentials extend to testimony, defense team says
By Jennifer McMenamin
Sun Reporter
Originally published April 19, 2007, 9:44 PM EDT

In the first case to include a longtime ballistics expert’s falsified credentials and perjurious testimony as part of a challenge to a defendant’s conviction, a defense gun expert testified Thursday that Joseph Kopera incorrectly concluded that a former police sergeant’s off-duty revolver could have been used to fire the bullet that killed the officer’s mistress.

The gun expert said he used Kopera’s measurements from 1993 of the bullet fragments — as well as those of a Baltimore County police firearms examiner who recently re-analyzed the evidence for prosecutors — in determining that former Baltimore Police Sgt. James A. Kulbicki’s .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver could not have been used in the killing. Read the rest of this entry »