We are back after lunch.
Harpootlian is wielding Buster's .300 Blackout semiautomatic rifle. “I don’t know how I can do this so I’m not pointing at somebody.”
Just watched it back. Harpootlian briefly seems to point the rifle toward the prosecution table. “Tempting,” he says. Laughter in the courtroom.
Sutton found a damaged tree that was hit by shotgun pellets and ran a string from that point through a hole in the feed room window and to the door in order to plot the upward trajectory of the first shotgun blast that hit Paul.
Sutton says he is 5-foot-10, by the way. If he were to shoot from the shoulder, it would have been a downward trajectory in order to hit the window at that spot. So, another shot seemingly fired from the hip.
Sutton is now explaining the auditory tests he ran at Moselle on 1/5/23. Sounds like he is about to explain whether you could hear shotgun and rifle blasts at the kennels from inside the Moselle main house, 1,100 feet away.
Sutton testifies he shot into the feed room, just as the 6/7/21 shooter did, which muffled the sound of the shotgun. Sutton testifies the .300 Blackout rifle that killed Maggie was much louder than the shotgun that killed Paul.
Sutton plays an audio recording of what it sounded like in the Moselle home when the loudest shots were fired (from the .300 Blackout). “You could barely hear it, and we were all listening for it," he says. If you had the TV, “there’s no way you could hear that shot.”
None of the rifles had suppressors. AM bought and paid for them but didn't fill out the paperwork necessary to pick them up, according to previous testimony.
Sutton testifies that based on data from General Motors, AM was gradually speeding up - around 42-45 mph - at the spot on Moselle Road at which Maggie’s phone was found the next day. The point Harpootlian is making is that AM didn’t slow down to throw it.
Nor did AM punch the gas immediately after passing that spot, data show.
Harpootlian: Would AM have been able to see Paul and Maggie’s bodies in the Suburban headlights as he pulled up to the scene? Prosecutor objects to the question on several grounds. Newman sustains the objection.
Harpootlian rephrases the question more artfully to get around the objection. Sutton agrees that someone driving the Suburban with the headlights on at night would have been able to see their bodies before pulling up and parking.
Sutton: A phone that is tossed out of a car going 45 mph would tumble. I believe this is a point Harpootlian is trying to get in for the dispute over when Maggie’s phone was ditched, and how closely that lines up to when AM was driving by the point where the phone was found.
Sutton: Data show AM was only at 80 mph for a few seconds on the return trip home from Almeda, not the entire trip. “He does reach high speeds on the return trip, but it’s not for a long period of time.”
Harpootlian asks if that brief burst of speed is consistent with passing someone on a two-lane road. Sutton says it could be.
