Reply #74: More info.

[reprehensor]

The problem is that the State alleged that the dent in the windowsill was evidence that would be used against Ray in a trial, even though the evidence was proven to be unverifiable.

Here is further commentary from Brown;

"Amongst other things, I have read in the record the big to-do about the mark in the window sill at the boarding house where the rifle was supposed to be fired. Well, let’s talk about the rifle. It’s a 760 Remington Gamemaster, a pump action, just like a 12 gauge pump shotgun. There is very little call for this weapon in any other part of the country other than the eastern seaboard, where certain states forbid the use of semi-automatic weapons for deer hunting. It’s a fast action but it’s not as powerful a weapon. There’s a peculiar thing about this weapon ... if you’re attempting to use a rest when you shoot it—the weapon does not shoot where it is sited in. Any hunter will tell you that if you are attempting to use a rest to shoot game, you put your coat, your hat, your pack, something under the rifle barrel—and you do not allow the rifle barrel to touch hard wood, rock or anything else because your weapon will not shoot where you have sited it in to shoot. Assuming you’ve sited the weapon in. If anyone placed the weapon on that window sill, sufficient to cause an indentation in the window sill, you can guarantee that whatever they were shooting at would not have been hit. Because the weapon would not have hit where it was sited in to hit."

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:kklXw9gWw7QJ:www.ctka.net/pr798-judge.html+james+earl+ray+rifle+window+sill&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=opera

------------------------------------

See the testimony of James H. Lesar, here;
http://www.thekingcenter.org/news/trial/Volume4.html

Pepper summarizes this aspect on pp. 120-121 of his book, "An Act of State"
http://books.google.com/books?id=8Bk9he6d1j8C&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=the+dent+in+the+window+sill+was+not+made+by+the+rifle&source=web&ots=S4HP9vFakZ&sig=obdCmwHYBpH5ByzcDJvS5TJKfHY&hl=en