Chain Of Custody: Safekeeping Of Evidence During The Trial Process

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.

Proper chain of custody procedures is paramount for the law enforcement and prosecutors involved with the case. In fact, a mistake or oversight as simple and unintentional as forgetting to sign the name of the person who was testing or transferring the evidence has all the capability of having a case thrown out or the defendant may be found not guilty.

Is conducted by a single judge to establish if a case is eligible for a trial by jury.

The Casey Anthony trial outraged the media and public when Casey Anthony was found not guilty on two counts of child neglect and murder. Casey Antony was put on trial on May 24th 2011 for the death of her daughter Caylee Anthony. From the beginning of the case all the facts seem to point to Casey Anthony, such as her lack of concern of her daughter’s whereabouts. Cindy Anthony made a call to law enforcement after picking up her car from a tow yard, which Cindy claimed reeked like human remains. The same car that Casey Anthony had abandoned in a parking lot after Caylee had been missing for about a month (Casey Anthony Biography, 2015). Caylee’s mother who failed to call police when her daughter went missing is a red flag.

It is important to understand when exactly an individual is in custody, this is established in many different ways. The location of the interrogation does not always establish custody, questioning could be at the department, on the street, as well as within a residence to name a few locations. The manner in which the interrogation is conducted establishes custody. An example of a custodial interrogation would be the announcement of an arrest, placing an individual in handcuffs, moreover, actions which would cause a reasonable person to believe they were not free to

Preserved and appropriately maintained custody of evidence through submission of evidence to the laboratory and evidence custodian for analysis and safekeeping.

While reading this week’s chapters one of the most promising future technologies that caught my attention and that I think that it can impact in a good way the future of the criminal justice system was the courtroom 21 project as the national standard in all courts in the United States because it will allow cases to be explained more clearly to the jury and judge and at the same time the courtroom 21 project can make the courts work more efficient which will result in cases to be solved quicker avoiding the backlogs of cases. The courtroom 21 project started in 1993 and it is located at William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia (William & Mary Law School). The whole purpose of the courtroom 21 project is to create and implement existing

Do you ever wonder about your Miranda Rights if you are ever questioned by an officer? Do you wonder if you will self-incrimination yourselves if you answer an officers questions in the wrong way? These are valid questions, and within this paper this learner hopes to answers them by describing custody and interrogation in the background of the Fifth Amendment, explain a circumstance where Miranda might be compulsory or a circumstance where the Miranda caveats would not be relevant.

The Innocence Project is, “a national litigation organization that is dedicated to acquitting wrongfully convicted “criminals” through DNA testing and through reforming the system to prevent further injustice” (The Innocence). The Innocence project was founded by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in 1992, and became a nonprofit organization in 2004. In addition to our co-directors and a managing attorney, there are six full-time staff attorneys and nearly 300 active cases. As a clinic, the law students handle the casework while being supervised by the team of attorneys and clinic staff. To determine whether or not to represent a case the Innocence Project gathers extensive information about each case application, and their intake and evaluation staff researches each potential case thoroughly. The legal staff ultimately determines whether DNA testing can be performed and, if so, whether or not the results will be favorable in innocence. The length of time spent on each case depends on how quickly evidence is found and secured; how long it takes to test the evidence. The Innocence Project also faces many hurdles in litigating theses cases. They include time-consuming and thorough efforts to find evidence; damaged evidence that cannot be correctly tested; lost or destroyed evidence; and prosecutorial objections. From the time a case is accepted, it can take between a year and

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

Due process by itself means that specific rules use in criminal cases. Stages need to be respected and rules of evidence use. In lesser cases, these substances are reasonably simple. The bigger the case, the farther strides and personnel are tangled and if any stage is avoided or ignored, the attorneys can have a field day in court, finally having a case tossed out due to his customers "rights" because he was violated. Due process halts a police state from taking over, but it also blocks the legal system with attorneys going around each and every stage. As for instance, a lot of police departments carry around with a paper printed out with the Miranda rights where an individual can automatically signs when detained and charged. This helps to

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:

Chain of custody is defined by Saferstein (2015), as a sequential documentation, that shows custody, control, analysis, handling and nature of physical or electrical evidence. Chain of custody is a model that is utilised by the police during criminal investigations to demonstrate that the evidence has been handled in a manner that does not destroy the integrity of the evidence (Houck & Siegel, 2015). According to Spikmans (2015), obeying the standard procedures of the chain of custody model can make sure that the evidence can endure any questioning of authenticity and integrity in court. Houck & Siegel (2015) stated that the chain of custody is without a doubt, the most important piece of paper generated at a crime scene; they postulated, that without it, the most convincing piece of forensic evidence can be rendered useless in the judicial system. According to Saferstein (2015), every monstrous failure during criminal cases is largely the result of incorrect usage of the chain of custody model, the most noteworthy which is the OJ Simpson case. This essay shows, the chain of custody model is crucial for demonstrating integrity and preserving the evidence, and by extension, justice. This essay contains two case studies that illustrate how the chain of custody model preserves evidence and displays the integrity of the evidence.

If the custody officer thinks that the suspect will try to intimidate the witnesses or tamper the evidence which need to be presented in court, the custody officer will keep the suspect in custody until the court trial, away from the evidence and witnesses.

Once bodily proof gathered at crime scenes is airtight in special ampules to avert adulteration and mortification and is itemized prudently. A chain of custody is founded and recognized as the proof is sent to a forensic