Chain of Custody

Once Scene of Crime Officers have collected the evidence from the crime scene and it has been bagged and tagged appropitaely. The Scene of Crime Officer will than hand this piece of evidence to and exibits log officer, who records what type of evidence is being seized and who by, on the exhibits log form. The exibits officer records who seized the item of evidence and what type of evidence it is so that throughtout the time period that the evidence is taken from the crime scene to the forensic laboratories for analysis, there will be a record of who has handled the evidence incase any contaminated or interferance has occured to the piece of evidence. Throughout the process of the item being ransfered from the crime scene to the forensic labs, in any authorised personell open a bag containing a piece of eviece they must fill out the tag upon the piece of evidence confirming who they are and there reasoning for opening the piece of evidence.


The O.J. Simpson Case
At the crime scene of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman suspicion grew of planted evidence at the crime scene, when evidence had not been recorded in to the chain of custody, ours after it had been seized. An example of this is when blood was taken from O.J. Simpson in order to compare his blood to samples that were taken fro the crime scene. However when the blood was taken from Simpson there was no record to the amount which was taken. This evidence was also not entered in to the chain of custody immediately as it was carried around by officer for the Los Angeles Police Department for a few hours first. This drew up suspician that simpsons blood had been planted at the crime scene as when the vial of Simpsons blood finally reached the forensic laboratories so specialists  could anayse the blood, the vial was not completely full. This mean that there was "lost blood" which could only have been "lost" inbetween the hours it was carried around by offciers from the LAPD. Therefore as the vital piece of evidence was not entered in to the chain of custody until hours after it was seized, and the fact there was "lost blood", the blood could not reported as taken or stole as there no record of how much blood was taken from O.J. Simpson.