Chapter 14: Real Evidence
Case Study 1
Overview — Based on: Jenkins v. State, 2017 Md. App. LEXIS 475 (2017).
A Maryland jury convicted Paul Jenkins, the defendant-appellant, of possession of heroin, second-degree assault, and two charges of failure to stop at the scene of an accident. The court sentenced him to four years in prison for possession of heroin and a consecutive six-year term for assault, among other penalties involving the traffic offenses. Defendant appealed the convictions, including the heroin possession charge.
The Maryland State Police (MSP) and the Worcester County (Maryland) Narcotics Task Force were working undercover to make drug buys from willing narcotic sellers. The officers arranged to purchase some heroin from the defendant by using cell phones and text messages. The sale was for the purchase of four “logs,” or 520 bags, of heroin and was to take place at a Maryland Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant parking lot. A multi-jurisdiction gang unit was to make the arrest. It consisted of MSP officer Mike Porta, driving an unmarked Ford Explorer, accompanied by Salisbury (Maryland) Police Department (SPD) Officer John Oliver and MSP officer Richard Lee Hagel Jr., driving an unmarked cruiser with SPD Officer Jesse Kissinger and MSP officer Moore as passengers. The gang unit officers all were wearing black vests with badges and the word, “Police,” affixed to their vests.
At the appointed time, the gang unit and the defendant arrived at the restaurant, and one of the officers called the defendant to change the location to a nearby Sam’s Club parking lot. When the defendant arrived at the revised location, the gang unit moved toward him for the purpose of making an arrest. The appellate court recounted the events that followed:
With lights activated and a short siren blast, Trooper Porta pulled in front of the appellant, while Corporal Hagel blocked the appellant’s car from behind. The officers exited their vehicles with guns drawn and pointed at the appellant. They identified themselves as police officers and directed the appellant to stop and put his hands out of the window. Instead, he put his car in reverse, striking Corporal Hagel’s vehicle and causing Officer Kissinger and Trooper Moore to have to dive out of the way. The force of the collision pushed Corporal Hagel’s vehicle into Trooper Moore. The appellant then drove forward, nearly striking Trooper Porta and Officer Oliver, and jumped a concrete “island” before exiting the parking lot onto U.S. Highway 13. As the appellant passed, Trooper Porta used his baton to smash the driver’s side window of the appellant’s car.
The officers pursued the appellant in a high speed chase north on U.S. 13. In addition to speeding, the appellant ran a red light and struck a vehicle in an intersection. The pursuit continued, and the appellant crossed the state line into Delaware. Shortly thereafter he lost control of his car and spun into the opposite lane of traffic. As his car was coming to a stop, officers saw him throw a white plastic bag out of the passenger-side window of his car toward the trees on the side of the road. Officers moved in and arrested him.
Officers recovered the white plastic bag that the defendant threw from the car, which was later proven to contain 520 little bags of heroin within a larger white bag. The trial judge permitted the prosecution to introduce evidence of heroin possession obtained from the large white bag.
In his defense, the appellant stated that he was taking marijuana to sell and that he did not possess heroin. He noted that when the vehicles moved rapidly toward his car, their lights and sirens were not activated, and he thought the vehicle that pulled in front of him was a motorist going the wrong direction. He also claimed he was listening to loud music, did not hear the sirens, and thought that he was under fire when he saw the guns and the window in his car shattered. Even after he realized the police were pursuing him, he said that he wanted to call his father for advice. At trial, the defendant also denied that he threw anything from the automobile.
One of the officers retrieved the bag containing heroin and, since the chase ended in Delaware, the officer thought the prosecution would be in Delaware. The officer delivered the bag of heroin to a Delaware police barracks, and an officer placed the bag in the evidence room. He indicated that the evidence room was unsecured. No other people were around the evidence or in the evidence room at that time. When it became clear that the prosecution would be in Maryland, the officer delivered the heroin evidence to a Maryland police officer, Corporal Hagel. At the Maryland police barracks, Corporal Hagel took the evidence out of the white plastic bag and counted 520 individual bags of suspected heroin. Subsequently, the officer secured all the individual bags, except for the white plastic bag, in a department-issued evidence bag, sealed it, and sent it to the Maryland Crime Laboratory for testing. The crime lab received the suspected heroin from the police officer. Tests by experts at the crime laboratory revealed that the net weight was 96.68 grams of heroin. Expert witnesses from the crime lab testified concerning the heroin. The white plastic bag that contained the 520 little bags was never seen again.
In his appeal, one of the issues of which the defendant complained involved the fact that the trial court erred in admitting the contraband heroin into evidence. The defendant contended that the prosecutor failed to properly authenticate the real evidence of heroin by a failure to demonstrate an adequate chain of custody, primarily due to the absence of the larger white plastic bag. He argued that the evidence of heroin, when it was introduced against him, was not the same as it was when originally seized.
The general rule with respect to authentication by proof of chain of custody is that so long as the evidence is substantially in the same condition as it was when it was first recovered, the evidence will be admitted. Consistent with this concept is a prosecution showing that the evidence that was analyzed was the same evidence that was originally seized and that there was no evidence of tampering with the sample.
No. Appellate courts will view chain of custody as being sufficient if, viewed in a light that is most favorable to the party that introduced it, the evidence shows a reasonable probability that it was the same evidence that was received by police and analyzed by the crime lab. The general rule is that where there are gaps or weaknesses in the proof of chain of custody, such gaps or weaknesses affect the weight to be given to the evidence and not to its admissibility. An abuse of discretion is the standard by which appellate courts review a trial court’s ruling on whether evidence satisfied the chain of custody requirement.
In this case, the appellate court ruled that the trial court judge did not abuse judicial discretion in admitting the evidence of heroin possession. Under the facts of this case, there was sufficient evidence to establish, within a reasonable probability, that the heroin evidence that the appellant threw out of his car window during the chase was the same evidence that the police seized and transferred from one police agency to another and back again. There was proof that the same evidence was transmitted to the drug lab for testing. According to the reviewing court, the fact that the white bag that originally contained the heroin was missing affected the weight of the evidence and not the sufficiency to prove the chain of custody. In this particular case, different police officers handled the evidence, and there was one instance in which it might have been briefly unsecured in a property room, but there was strong evidence that there was an absence of tampering. In addition, there was clear evidence that the sample delivered to the drug laboratory was the same heroin that was found at the scene where it had been tossed by the defendant-appellant Jenkins.
The reviewing court affirmed the convictions of the defendant and rejected his contention that the evidence of heroin possession against him failed to meet the chain of custody test for authentication.
See Chapter 14, Section 14.4 and 14.4(E).
Case Study 2
Overview — Based on: State v. Johnson, 47 So. 3d 449, 210 La. App. LEXIS 971 (2010).
The defendant and other individuals had been shooting dice at the apartment of an associate until the party broke up and the men headed for their automobiles. At this point, the defendant allegedly attempted to rob one of the dice game participants and shot him with a handgun, while a different associate also inflicted gunshot wounds upon the soon-to-be decedent. After a short investigation, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s officers identified the defendant and another perpetrator. The coroner’s office conducted an investigation of the decedent’s body to determine identity, cause of death, and the trajectory of the bullets that caused the decedent’s demise. The coroner concluded that two different firearms inflicted wounds that were individually fatal or potentially fatal. At the trial, the prosecution introduced testimony using expert testimony offered by an assistant coroner. The coroner introduced autopsy photographs that showed the dead body, entrance and exit wounds, and the trajectory of some of the bullets. In demonstrating the bullet trajectories, prior to taking some of the photographs, the coroner had inserted rods to graphically depict the way the bullets entered the body of the decedent. The coroner’s evidence helped convict the defendant of second-degree murder. The defendant then brought an appeal limited to the issue of whether the photographs introduced by the coroner should have been admitted.
In his only assignment of error, the defendant argued that the trial court committed reversible error in allowing the photographs of the coroner to be admitted in evidence. The defendant contended that the probative value of the photographs was clearly outweighed by unfair prejudicial effect to his case. He asserted that close-up photographs of the dead victim and the photograph of the victim with a rod protruding from his head, which established the bullet trajectory, were so gruesome that they overwhelmed the jurors’ sense of reason and fairness. According to the defendant-appellant’s contentions, this unfair prejudice caused the jury to convict the defendant without sufficient other evidence. The defendant alleged that diagrams offered by the coroner would have been sufficient to establish trajectory and that the photographs were completely unnecessary.
The prosecution contended that the trial court ruled properly and that the photographs were properly used by the assistant coroner in conjunction with her testimony to establish entry and exit wounds, the cause of death, and the identity of the victim. Additionally, the state contended that the photographs were not particularly gruesome and that their probative value most assuredly outweighed any prejudicial effect to the defendant.
According to Louisiana law, evidence is relevant if it has any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. All relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by law, and irrelevant evidence is not admissible. However, relevant evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay or waste of time. The prosecutor is entitled to the moral force of its evidence, and postmortem photographs of murder victims are admissible to prove corpus delicti, to provide positive identification of victim, and to corroborate other evidence establishing cause of death, the manner in which the death occurred, and the location, severity, number, and placement of the wounds. The general rule is that the mere fact that a photo is gruesome does not in itself make the photograph excludable from evidence.
No. As a general principle, autopsy photographs may be admissible in evidence, especially in homicide cases. The mere fact that a photograph is gruesome does not mean that it may not be admitted. Only where a photograph is so gruesome and so outrageous as to overwhelm the jurors’ collective reason to the point that there is a danger the jury might convict on less than sufficient evidence may such photographs be excluded.
See Chapter 14, Section 14.6.
No. The photographs were not repetitive or cumulative, according to the appellate court, and they were clearly used to demonstrate the wounds to the deceased and the trajectories of the fatal bullets. The photographs helped corroborate the coroner’s testimony concerning identity, cause of death, and bullet trajectory. Even though the coroner’s diagrams could properly indicate bullet trajectory, the photographs were admissible at trial. Even though the photographs indicated that the defendant had been rolled in some blood, and the photos might not be pleasant to observe, their probative value clearly existed, and the reviewing court considered that they were not unduly prejudicial.
See Chapter 14, Section 14.6.
No. The trial judge ruled that the photographs that depicted wounds that had been inflicted on the victim’s body and the photographs that depicted the angles with which the wounds were inflicted were probative of issues in the case and were not repetitive or unnecessarily gory. Even though the photographs were clearly unpleasant, they did not unnecessarily prejudice the defendant’s case and were properly admitted against him.
See Chapter 14, Section 14.6(B).