Rick Wyant received his Master’s Degree in 1994, has been forensic scientist since 1995 and a reserve deputy since 2000. He currently supervises the forensic firearms unit at the Seattle crime laboratory and is court qualified in firearm/tool identification, crime scene analysis, less-lethal devices, and trajectory reconstruction. He has been analyzing evidence related to Electronic Control Devices (ECD) since 2001 and is one of the founding members of CRT LL. Rick helped to develop testing protocols that have been utilized by ECD, OC-pepper spray, and Less Lethal impact munitions manufacturers. His standard operating procedures for ECD evidence analysis have been adopted by other crime laboratories. Rick and CRT LL have taught these protocols to police agencies, scientists, students and attorneys all over the US and abroad including the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada.
Rick published several scientific papers and has testified over 100 times as a court qualified expert in criminal/civil courts in Texas, Oregon, South Dakota , Washington State and Queensland Australia. Testimony has included firearm and toolmark identification, weapon functionality, serial number restoration, distance determinations, crime scene/trajectory reconstruction, less-lethal weapon analysis. He is a distinguished member of the Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners, an associate member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, a board member of the Scientific Working Group for Firearms and Toolmarks(SWGGUN), and the NIJ Technology Working Group (TWG) for less-lethal weapons. In 2012, he assisted with the Atlas of Conducted Electrical Weapon Wounds and Forensic Analysis where he authored Chapter 10.
Since 2001, he testified as a forensic expert of ECD (TASER) devices and has analyzed evidence and documentation related to the deployment of TASERs in many jurisdictions, including cases from Washington State, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, California, Illinois, Oregon, Ohio, Texas, Michigan, Arkansas, South Dakota, New York, Vancouver BC and Queensland Australia. In June 2010, Wyant helped establish foundation criteria for the admissibility of forensic TASER evidence under the FRYE standard. See ruling (pdf).