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Some people seem to think the police shooting of Anthony Dwain Lee last Halloween is an open and shut case, given the information released last week from an autopsy report. That report said that Lee was shot in the back three times and in the back of the head once. But, at this point, we can’t leap to conclusions. We need to look carefully at where the bullets entered Lee’s body and what that indicates about the shooting.

As a forensic pathologist with 30 years experience as a medical examiner-coroner, I have a special interest in firearms injury. I have worked on the reconstruction and analysis of numerous police shooting cases, including the Amadou Diallo shooting in New York City, and I have testified as an expert witness. I also have had the opportunity to observe and participate in police firearms training.

I will not concern myself here with the issue of when police officers should or shouldn’t use deadly force. These policies are for others to determine--in Los Angeles, the Police Commission. I am concerned here only with forensic issues and what I have learned through the years about how shootings relate to how police officers are trained.

In the case of the Lee shooting, it seems clear that there was some initiating stimulus that led the police officer to draw his gun and shoot. There has to have been some perception of threat to cause the officer to draw and fire.

The rule of thumb for human perception-reaction time is that for a healthy, aware, unimpaired individual, it takes three-fourths of a second to perceive a threat or danger, and another three-fourths of a second to react to the threat--for a total of 1 1/2 seconds.

Pistol bullets move out of the muzzle of a gun at about 900 to 1,000 feet per second. Police officers everywhere--not just in Los Angeles--are trained to respond almost reflexively to a threat from a firearm. There is obviously not a lot of time to think about it.

A friend of mine who is a police firearms trainer has used an electronic timer to measure the performance of experienced police officers on a firing range. After several consecutive days of practice, it takes an average police officer about one second to draw a pistol from a duty holster and fire the first shot. To fire nine or 10 shots from a modern semiautomatic pistol could take an additional two to three seconds.

Another important aspect of police firearms training is that officers are taught to keep firing at an adversary until that person falls or is obviously incapacitated. In real life, unlike the movies, impacting bullets do not physically knock a person down. The bullets penetrate the body to disrupt internal organs and blood vessels, causing hemorrhage, loss of blood pressure and collapse. This means that quite often there is a delay in response by the person who is struck by the bullets. Unfortunately, this can result in multiple shots being fired from a large capacity semiautomatic pistol.

The autopsy report reveals that Lee was struck by four bullets, all of them striking the posterior or rear surface of his body. The three bullets that struck the trunk entered on the right rear and penetrated his body going from right to left and back to front.

This finding has led some people to conclude that it is not possible for Lee to have been facing the police officer and displaying his replica pistol. I think that this is not true. There could be a time of delay of a second or longer between a frontal display of the replica pistol and the time the first shot was fired. According to reports, nine shots were fired, taking several more seconds. It is unknown which bullets in this sequence of nine shots struck Lee. He could have turned away from the glass door in response to the noise and muzzle flash of the police officer’s weapon so that the bullets struck him in the back.

Some of the questions raised in this unfortunate and tragic case can be answered by crime scene analysis. This could include such things as bullet trajectories, where the officer was when he fired, the distance from the firing position to the body and the illumination of the room and the outside walkway.

It is obviously going to take some time to resolve this case. Unfortunately, the burden of litigation usually means that the investigators and investigative agencies involved cannot make public statements. I would hope that the public would have patience with this situation and not succumb to inflammatory rhetoric.