criminal-law rules-of-court rules-of-evidence
Chain of Custody
<p>So chain of custody is obviously important, but why? </p>

<p>I have seen many articles referring to drugs and one where the murder weapon was handled without gloves. But what about other types of evidence being mishandled.</p>

<p>For example if a weapon believed used in a crime was in evidence and it was revealed at the time it was taken and stored before forensics in a evidence room that was unsecured, unguarded and other evidence was definitively tampered with. Would that mean the evidence regardless of the follow on forensics has a broken chain of custody? i.e. that department mishandled evidence in general as a practice and that resulted in a blanket dismissal for the time period. Due to bad paperwork practices the case for that evidence was filed (The evidence was sent somewhere else for forensic testing and the paper trail started there). The question is basically if evidence was mishandled, regardless of the evidence type, is that a broken chain of custody and if so does that mean the evidence will be excluded?</p>

<p>Physical evidence must be authenticated to be admissible as evidence in court. In other words, the person seeking to introduce it as evidence must show that it is what it claims to be by some means (there are many legitimate ways to authenticate evidence).</p>

<p>A chain of custody is used to authenticate physical evidence.</p>

<p>Even if physical evidence can be authenticated sufficiently to be admissible as evidence, evidence that there was a break in a chain of custody could create a reasonable doubt that physical evidence which is key to obtaining a conviction is really evidence that was collected, for example, from a particular crime scene at a particular time. </p>

<p>This doubt could provide a basis for an acquittal of a defendant in a criminal trial if that piece of evidence was an important part of the case to show that the defendant was guilty.</p>
