Bias and the media. The great tax cut myth. Until a month ago, there were 12 judges, not 14, sitting on the 6th Circuit's en banc panel. At the time, it looked as if the majority would vote in favor of granting Workman a new trial.
Senior judges have the right to join deliberations when they choose.
Those same judges also happened to be on the three-judge panel that had already denied Workman's request for a new trial. The senior Republican judges swung the en banc vote to a tie. The X-ray shows that the bullet that killed Oliver did not fragment inside his body. The non-fragmentation suggests that the bullet might have come from a .38 special, the kind of bullet two other police officers at the scene of the robbery carried in their firearms. He contends that the X-ray is less telling than the wounds on Oliver's body, which could have been caused by a .45.