Kind of suggests it wasn't used - but there's no surprise there. Surely if it was coughing out fragmented bullets and most of those fired during the murders weren't - it kind of adds weight to it not having been used?
The quoted statement doesn't say anything about spitting out fragmented bullets.
It says the bolt was not properly closing and the ejection port had problems sometimes thus causing either a cartridge to jam instead of feeding properly or the spent casing to get stuck.
If a cartridge doesn't feed prerly into the chamber the gun won't shoot. You have to get the stuck cartridge out and either feed a new cartridge in. If the spent shell casing is stuck it likewise prevents a new round from being prerly fed into the chamber. You again hadve to clear the jam and then load the gun again.
The gun periodically got jammed on Fletcher and would not shoot, he had to clear the jam before he could fire. There was nothing wrong with the bullets that came out of the gun the significance of this is that potentially the gun could have jammed on the killer. Sheila probably would not know how to clear it even if not in a deranged state let alone a deranged one.
The killer was probably lucky though. In all likelihood the damage occurred when Nevill was being beaten. Jamming when shooting at the parents in the bedroom would have been a serious problem because potentially it could have jammed before the killer immobilized either of them which woudl have left two people to disarm a killer with a jammed wepaon. But there is no evidence to suggest that happened.
After the kitchen episode the boys were shot 8 times and Sheila 2 so a misfire would not have been that big a deal like it would have in the master bedroom. Could there have been a jam and that explain why 1 boy got 5 rounds and the second only 3? Perhaps but Jeremy could have simply decided to save some bullets for Sheila isntead of having to go reload so the difference in shots is hardly proof of a misfire. The tight grouping of the shots suggests they were fired in rapid succession not a gap between the shots so no sign of a jam in that respect.
He spoke about dirt potentially causing the problem. The gun wasn't cleaned between the murders and testing. The dirt and grime from the shots fired during the murders had time to cause problems. So it is possible that the jamming problem developed subsequent to the murders.
So that is why the prosecution ultimately did not argue the gun would have jammed and Sheila would no have known how to clear it thus she wasn't the killer. There just wasn't enough to say it definitely would have jammed or claim there was evidence to prove it did.
