Chain Of Custody: Admissibility Of Evidence

Maintaining a chain of custody on evidence is essential to preserve the integrity of the evidence. When the chain of custody is broken, the evidence becomes unreliable. Without reliable evidence, a person who commits a crime can’t be convicted. Chain of custody issues appear in many cases. One such case, is OJ Simpson’s murder case (People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson). He was trained in 1994 for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

What is custody evaluation? Simply put, it is the legal process performed via a court appointed mental health expert. This expert may be a psychologist or social worker. His or her job is to evaluate a family and makes a recommendation to the court for a custody, visitation or parenting plan. A judge may choose to use custody evaluation as well as testimony from other witness when making a final judgement (A. J. 2011).

The film, Evidence and Forensic: Due Process, highlights the development of evidence used everyday in the criminal justice system. Putting to sleep, stereotypical Hollywood crime shows, by displaying acceptable criminal evidence, then analyzing the evidence, and applying the evidence in court. The program accounts on the important techniques and actions taken by not only law enforcement, but also forensics specialists and lawyers.

All available physical evidence is handled competently. Evidence will be recorded and processed correctly and inside the law procedures.

The Miranda Court limited the decision to circumstances in which the person has been “… taken into custody or otherwise deprived of freedom of action in any significant way.” In modern cases, custody has been interpreted to include arrests and situations in which a reasonable person (not essentially the person actually involved) would think their freedom of action was restrained to the degree associated with arrest. Whether a custodial situation exists is not always clear-cut. For instance, if the restraint is at the police station, or is in a police vehicle, or under a “police-dominated atmosphere,” it would be more probable to be considered custody. Nonetheless, if the person is at their home or place of business, in their

The procedure should accomplish that each type of physical evidence, whether an intact object, pieces of an object, blood, glass, liquids, or gasses, must be collected, marked or tagged, packaged, transported, and stored properly to be later admitted in to evidence in court. The maintaining proper chain of custody is particularly important when the object is one that is not unique or when questions could be raised about changes in the condition of the object, unique or not. Upon arrival at a crime scene, the officer should first quickly determine if anyone is injured or needs medical treatment and, if so, summon the health professionals. Then the officer should survey the crime scene, quickly determine whom to interview, and move nonessential individuals out of the area. The crime scene area should be cordoned off or otherwise closed to nonessential individuals.

One of the pretrial DNA evidence issues is discovery issue, which involves the duty to maintain or expose evidence. The law of jurisdiction and constitutional mandate can decide the duty for each case. The second issue is the exposure time, for the mandate and for the parties and court. The police or prosecution is not required to maintain all potential evidence. The crucial distinction is between materially relevant evidence and potentially beneficial evidence. Police loss or destruction of evidence that is potentially useful that may prove innocence if tested, does not violate due process "unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police."

To maintain chain of custody, you must maintain evidence from the time it is assembled to the time it is shown in court. To sustain the chain of custody, and eventually show that the evidence has remained intact or in one piece. Crime scene specialists and prosecutors generally need service providers or specialist in this field who can testify:

With regards to tackling cases, material evidence is an immense factor. Proof is either a declaration from somebody or a physical introduction that can be utilized to help demonstrate an asserted move/event occurred. For proof to be reasonable in the official courtroom, it must be allowable. Permissible proof is any document, declaration, or solid confirmation utilized as a part of an official courtroom that is significant or solid when relating to a particular case (Tran, 2016). In the event that confirmation is not permissible, a judge won't enable it to be utilized as a part of a case.

In order to maintain the integrity of the case all evidence must be properly collected and transported. Officials must take the ethical and moral responsibility to uphold their jobs to collect every piece of evidence and preserve it correctly. If it is not they could potentially ruin the evidence and any case that may have been developed against the defendant. “Once a scene has been released it is not possible to go back and collect anything else. There is no longer a direct chain of custody from the original scene (Gaensslen, Harris, & Lee, 2008, pg. 65).”

Chain of custody refers to the safekeeping of evidence during the trial process, the chain of custody also keeps track of who had access to the evidence, why did that individual had access to the evidence, what was done to the evidence, when and where was the evidence taken if it was taken somewhere for testing or anything, one of the main goals of maintaining a chain of custody is to try to preserve the evidence in the same form that it was found at the crime scene during the whole trial process, failure to maintain a chain of custody can result in the inadmissibility of evidence in court (Buckles, 2006, p.

After distribution digital devices to the research laboratory, the detective should point to the sort of info being wanted, such as phone numbers as well as call pasts from a cell phone, emails, documents and also messages from a processer, or even imageries on a tablet. As soon as the digital proof has been sent to the research laboratory, a skilled analyst will take the subsequent stages to reclaim as well as scrutinize information. When the proof collection and examination is conducted correctly; the inspectors can protect the info that can help with the felonious bustle claims through conversation or even a communication interchange, imageries as well as documents. The inspector will normally deliver all the auxiliary certification, emphasizing pertinent info, but also a statement itemizing what was done to excerpt the information. As with proof of additional sorts, chain of custody as well as proper assortment and extraction methods are acute to the believability of proof and should be painstakingly recognized. An uninterrupted chain of custody should be upheld in directive for proof to be acknowledged in the court of law. Values necessitate that every individual who handles

This is a “model” for answers, which will be posed to investigators by the exercise assessors. Since a significant criminal event could occur at any place and at any time. These answers will by a key to help investigators understand the abilities of multi-jurisdictional along with the advantages and disadvantages that could come into play. Investigators will be able to understand who is involved in deciding the use of a task force, legal issues that could face the task force, advantages and disadvantages of the task force, as well as, the collection and analysis of forensic and testimonial evidence, all while handling the public during a crisis. While it is perfectly possible, even predictable, that investigative needs will be beyond the

GCU offices need to have appropriate access controls to anticipate unapproved passage into secure areas. Finding the work force outside the capacity region limits the quantity of individuals approaching the capacity territory. Evidence needs to be handle by those of the investigate unit, keep in a secure room and GCU managers should determines who has access to the evidence.

Criminals often commit more than one crime. 30% of felonies are committed only by 5% of the criminals. Since there is such an imbalance in felonies and offenders, capturing one potential offender can prevent multiple future crimes. However, while forensic research is extremely useful and reliable, it is rarely an option due to lack of evidence. An alternative option would be to identify multiple cases as being linked by the same offender and compiling small clues from each crime scene to come up with a larger sample of evidence. However, to declare two or more cases as being linked is not as easy as it sounds. Offenders of linked crimes must “behave in a consistent and distinctive manner throughout their crimes” (Bennell, 2002; Woodhams et al., 2007) in order to safely assume that the cases were committed by the same individual. The two commonly used characteristics to identify whether cases are linked is their location and time between offences. If cases are linked, the crime scenes should be somewhat close together and within a short period of time. Markson et al. (2010) believes that the distance between the crime scene should be less than 2.994 km and that the time between