Criminalist Caitlin Little pours nearly 450 grams (about one pound) of methamphetamine into an evidence bag at the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Crime Lab. This is considered a large methamphetamine case compared to the average case of .20 to .25 grams, according to Jill Ibarreta, the supervising criminalist of the lab’s chemistry section.
Little will then perform two presumptory color tests to see if the substance in question reacts to various chemicals the same way methamphetamine would.
Little will then perform a third confirmatory test, comparing the substance in question to what is essentially the “fingerprint” of methamphetamine. In the event she is not able to get a perfect match, she would have to purify a sample of the substance and continue testing. In this case, however, she gets that perfect match. The substance is methamphetamine.
In order to determine the kind of gun from which a bullet has been fired, Criminalist Bruce Moran will compare a crime-scene bullet to a bullet shot from one of the lab’s own firearms.
He’ll then compare the two bullets for a variety of markings that will indicate whether they were fired from the same type of gun.
The markings that Moran inspects are imprinted on both the bullet and cartridge during the each gun’s unique cycle-of-fire – and indicate if two bullets were fired from the same type of gun.
The Sacramento County D.A.’s Crime Lab has roughly 1,200 firearms in its “small” collection
At the Crime Lab
Ballistics, meth and a peek at the gun room