James Ferris, Emeritus professor in Forensic Pathology at the University of British Columbia, is one of three pathologists called by the Crown in the retrial of 37-year-old David Cullen Bain for the murder of five of his family in 1994.
The Crown says Bain shot his parents and three siblings and blamed his father, but the defence say Robin Bain shot his wife and three of his children before using the rifle with a silencer to shoot himself in the left temple.
Prof Ferris said he had studied cards of test firings carried out by a police armourer and the powder distribution from a shot fired at a range of 38cm from the card best illustrated the powder distribution around the wound to Robin Bain's left temple.
His overall conclusion, based on his interpretation of the gunshot wound was that suicide would reasonably be excluded.
Alexander Dempster, the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem on Mr Bain had described the wound to Robin Bain as a close contact wound but a second pathologist, Kenneth Thomson of Wellington earlier told the court he did not agree it was a close contact wound but rather an intermediate range wound so would not have been self-inflicted.
