St. Louis prosecutor allegedly ordered crime lab to tamper with evidence in McCloskey case

The gun in question is the property of Patricia McCloskey, who, together with her husband Mark McCloskey, are facing charges for unlawful use of a weapon.

It’s been hard to not be aware of the incident that led to these charges being filed, as memes of the couple brandishing weapons against a crowd of protestors outside their home in the St. Louis suburbs went viral. There have even been videos made on YouTube about the incident, and about the memes resulting from the incident.

The famous handgun, along with Mark McCloskey’s AR-15 (clearly visible in the memes) were confiscated by local police and taken to a crime lab, where the alteration to the handgun took place. Technicians were able to successfully re-engineer the gun and make it fire again.

The handgun had been permanently disabled by putting the firing pin spring on the wrong side of the firing pin, making it inoperable. The McCloskeys indicated that it has been used as a prop in a courtroom during a lawsuit the couple had brought against a gun manufacturer. They had done this to the weapon so that it could be admitted into the courtroom legally.

The legal issue at hand here is whether the weapons were readily capable of lethal use, and this is where the controversy comes in. If the prosecutor is found to have ordered the reconstruction of the handgun in order to influence the outcome of a potential trial, this could indeed be construed as a misconduct and be grounds for a lawsuit, among other legal consequences.

The McCloskeys have already spoken out publicly and given their side of what happened during this incident. They feel that they were in fear of their lives since the crowd that had gathered right outside their house had just broken an iron gate to gain entrance to their street, and many of them were shouting death threats.