What does it mean if there’s a break in the chain of custody?

If you’ve watched any police or legal procedural TV shows, you’re probably familiar with the “chain of custody.” It is the path that a piece of evidence in a legal case follows from the time that it’s obtained by law enforcement to the time it’s presented as evidence in court.

It’s critical that every “link” in the chain is documented, including every person who handled it or moved it at any point. Typically, a piece of evidence is moved from the crime scene to storage, then to a lab for analysis and then back to storage until it’s presented in court.

The purpose of having an unbroken chain of custody is to ensure that the evidence that was collected is the same evidence that’s being used to prosecute someone. If there’s any question about where that piece of evidence was or who accessed it at any point, the evidence could be ruled inadmissible. Any further evidence that is retrieved from the original piece of evidence, like fingerprints or DNA, would also be ruled inadmissible. If it’s a key piece of evidence, the prosecution’s case could be over.

Examples of breaks in the chain of custody

Some of the most common examples of breaches or breaks in a chain of custody include the following:

• A law enforcement officer doesn’t bring the evidence directly to police headquarters for appropriate logging and storage.
• The evidence is mislabeled at a lab.
• An unauthorized person checks out the evidence from storage.
• A seal on a storage bag is broken or shows signs of tampering.
• The evidence is compromised by other people’s fingerprints or DNA.

While even if some of these types of breaches occur, a piece of evidence might still be uncompromised. Nonetheless, if the proper handling of it can be questioned, judges will typically err or the side of protecting the defendant and rule it inadmissible (or “suppressed”).

Getting assistance from a legal team can help defendants find out if a piece of evidence being used against them may have been compromised. Legal professionals can question every piece of evidence and look for signs that it’s been compromised in some way – whether due to a break in the chain of custody, a contaminated crime scene or a violation of a defendant’s rights by law enforcement officers. That’s one reason that getting legal guidance as early as possible is important.