chain of custody

RSG #361: How To Trace Government Evidence That Was Collected but Never Examined

Government agencies collect phones, computers, DNA samples, financial records, surveillance footage, documents, fingerprints, weapons, photographs, and entire storage devices. The existence of an evidence receipt proves that an item entered government custody. It does not prove that anyone examined it. That distinction matters. Evidence can be photographed, packaged, numbered, stored, transferred, rejected by a laboratory, …

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Resistance Kitty examines a broken evidence pipeline showing six steps for tracing evidence that never reached prosecutors, from proving the evidence existed through reporting only what the records prove.

RSG #360: How To Trace Evidence That Never Reached Prosecutors

An investigator collects an interview, photograph, recording, financial record, forensic result, or digital extraction. The evidence enters an agency file. Then, somewhere between collection and prosecution, it stops moving. Sometimes the explanation is ordinary. The evidence was duplicative, unrelated, legally unusable, transferred elsewhere, or received after a decision was made. Sometimes an agent failed to …

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