IAPE Evidence Blog

thestate.com, Herald-Journal
BYLINE: LYNNE P. SHACKLEFORD and CRAIG PETERS — (Spar­tan­burg) Herald-Journal
Link to Article

Spar­tan­burg County, SC

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Spartanburg County offi­cials are work­ing to enhance secu­rity in the cour­t­house evi­dence locker after the clerk of court was charged last week with steal­ing drugs stored there.

Meth­ods used by the clerk’s office for han­dling and stor­ing evi­dence came under scrutiny Tues­day, when fed­eral agents accused Spar­tan­burg County Clerk of Court Marc Kitchens of tak­ing cocaine and metham­phet­a­mine from the evi­dence locker. Kitchens is charged with con­spir­ing with Woodruff real estate devel­oper Terry Glenn Lan­ford in a scheme to sell the sub­stances to a drug dealer in Florida between April and January.

Pro­bate Court Judge Ponda Cald­well is the act­ing clerk of court and said she will leave fur­ther pol­icy review to her suc­ces­sor, but she has talked with County Admin­is­tra­tor Glenn Breed about the need for a key­pad entrance and alarm sys­tem in addi­tion to the locked entrance now in place. Cald­well said the county is in the process of get­ting bids on the alarm sys­tem and cam­eras in and around the room.

She said only the assis­tant clerk of court and Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tions agents have access to the locker. The FBI, the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion and the State Law Enforce­ment Divi­sion are tak­ing an inven­tory of the locker to deter­mine whether any evi­dence is missing.

Solic­i­tor Trey Gowdy said the agents are work­ing in the con­fer­ence room in his office and the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing. Gowdy said he doesn’t know how many cases — if any — are affected.

Gowdy said he rec­om­mends the clerk’s office imple­ment pro­ce­dures sim­i­lar to the ones rec­om­mended by the State Law Enforce­ment Divi­sion and used by sev­eral offices in the state, includ­ing Greenville County.

Greenville County Clerk of Court Paul Wick­en­simer said unless a judge orders him to keep evi­dence in the cour­t­house vault, he signs it back over to the appro­pri­ate law enforce­ment agency after a trial or plea.

“We pre­fer not to ware­house evi­dence here,” Wick­en­simer said. “We do have a vault where we can house those types of items, but law enforce­ment is bet­ter equipped to deal with it.”

Wick­en­simer said although the SLED guide­lines aren’t manda­tory, “we have cho­sen to adhere to those guide­lines. The law enforce­ment cen­ter has a larger place to store evi­dence, they have a per­son who man­ages the room and cam­eras for secu­rity. We choose not to keep evi­dence longer than we have to.”

Gowdy said law enforce­ment goes to great lengths by wear­ing gloves and pro­tec­tive cloth­ing, for exam­ple, to main­tain the integrity of a crime scene from the time they first respond to a call. Offi­cers who process crime scenes log in every piece of evi­dence and main­tain the chain of cus­tody by doc­u­ment­ing any review or trans­fer of evi­dence up to the time the case goes to trial.

—

‘Account­abil­ity paramount’

The Spar­tan­burg Pub­lic Safety Depart­ment and the Spar­tan­burg County Sheriff’s Office said pro­tect­ing evi­dence is crit­i­cal. Each agency has a detailed pol­icy that estab­lishes pro­to­col for the stor­age and super­vi­sion of evi­dence and property.

Inven­to­ries are done annu­ally, and unan­nounced inspec­tions occur each year. The limited-access stor­age facil­i­ties at the sheriff’s office and police depart­ment have mul­ti­ple locks, sur­veil­lance cam­eras and highly secure areas for stor­ing guns, drugs, money and valu­able items.

David Reeves has worked as an evi­dence cus­to­dian at Spar­tan­burg Pub­lic Safety nearly 10 years, and Myl­nor Beach has been his part­ner for almost four. Reeves said the charge against Kitchens prompted him to con­duct an inven­tory of the city’s evi­dence facil­ity, which con­tains about 57,000 items from about 15,000 cases.

“Account­abil­ity is para­mount here,” Reeves said. “Pre­serv­ing and pro­tect­ing evi­dence is what we’re about. A defense attor­ney can get evi­dence thrown out if the chain of cus­tody is compromised.”

Beach and Reeves said the trust they have in each other is vital, in addi­tion to the checks and bal­ances estab­lished by policy.

“If I had a mil­lion dol­lars, (Reeves is) who I’d want to keep it,” Beach said.

Shelves of envelopes con­tain pho­tos and state­ments — the most com­mon type of evi­dence — and other envelopes con­tain videos. Guns and knives are indi­vid­u­ally placed in boxes, and spe­cial bags con­tain drugs and other evi­dence. A bar­code sys­tem is used, and mul­ti­ple records are kept.

Not every type of evi­dence fits in an enve­lope, how­ever, so Reeves built a rack that holds a cou­ple of base­ball bats, yard tools and a bro­ken crutch. The city facil­ity also con­tains a mur­der room. Reeves said police must keep evi­dence from a homi­cide — even those solved and cleared with a con­vic­tion — for 75 years.

“Secu­rity can’t be in ques­tion,” Reeves said. “I’ll put my integrity against any­one in the state. They can come review our evi­dence locker, and we’ll review theirs.”

Offi­cers have the respon­si­bil­ity for autho­riz­ing dis­posal of evi­dence. In arrest cases, they must request court dispositions.

Reeves recently received per­mis­sion to dis­pose of five pounds of mar­i­juana from SLED and will take the box to Columbia.

—

Court pro­ce­dures

When a case is called for trial, an evi­dence cus­to­dian tes­ti­fies about the chain of cus­tody and ver­i­fies that items col­lected on the day of the crime are what are entered as court exhibits.

S.C. Court Admin­is­tra­tion issues pol­icy for clerks of court regard­ing the stor­age of evi­dence admit­ted as exhibits. The pol­icy stresses the impor­tance of account­abil­ity sys­tems and restrict­ing access to the exhibit stor­age area, as well as the impor­tance of inven­tory lists. But it does not pro­vide require­ments for any security/surveillance of the stor­age area.

Before last week, three peo­ple — Kitchens, Assis­tant Clerk of Court Gail Mof­fitt and Chief Admin­is­tra­tive Assis­tant Charlena Tins­ley — had access to the cour­t­house exhibit room, Mof­fitt said.

After a trial is com­pleted, the clerk or the arrest­ing law enforce­ment agency stores the exhib­ited evi­dence until the time for appeals elapses in crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, which can be years or decades. The pol­icy estab­lishes a sep­a­rate pro­ce­dure for the return or dis­posal of items in civil cases.

- — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — -
Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

koinlocal6.com
BYLINE: Kyle Mal­lory, kmallory@koin.com
Link to Arti­cle
one photo

Van­cou­ver, WA

VANCOUVER — After a 12 month inves­ti­ga­tion, Van­cou­ver Police announced today the ter­mi­na­tion of one of their own officers.

Cpl. Randy Braaksma is accused of mis­han­dling evi­dence, includ­ing tak­ing drug evi­dence to his per­sonal res­i­dence where he held the para­phe­nilia for up to a year.

As a result, the Clark County pros­e­cut­ing attorney’s office declined to pros­e­cute the sus­pect in the case involv­ing the evidence.

In another case, Braaksma reported seiz­ing cash and drugs dur­ing the arrest of a sus­pect, but the evi­dence was not sub­mit­ted to the VPD evi­dence facil­ity until six months later.

Addi­tional cases were also dis­cov­ered in which Cpl. Braaksma mis­han­dled evi­dence in the course of the investigation.

“The actions of Cpl. Braaksma doc­u­mented in this inves­ti­ga­tion are com­pletely unac­cept­able,” said Police Chief Cliff Cook in a release from the depart­ment today.

“Tak­ing home drug evi­dence and repeat­edly mis­han­dling evi­dence that could oth­er­wise be used to help take crim­i­nals off the street can not be tol­er­ated in the Van­cou­ver Police Depart­ment,” Cook added.

After Braaksma was noti­fied of the alle­ga­tions against him in Feb­ru­ary 2009, he filed a Tort Claim Notice with the City of Van­cou­ver indi­cat­ing he intended to file suit against the city.

The Van­cou­ver Police Depart­ment is res­olute in its inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion process and find­ings, and in the dis­ci­pli­nary actions taken.

- — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — -
Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

States News Ser­vice
BYLINE: States News Service

Spar­tan­burg, SC

The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion was released by the Colum­bia Divi­sion of the Fed­eral Bureau of Investigation:

Act­ing United States Attor­ney Kevin F. McDon­ald stated today that for­mer Spar­tan­burg County Clerk of Court Mar­cus Woodrow Kitchens, age 42, of Spar­tan­burg, and Woodruff res­i­dent Terry Glenn Lan­ford, age 53, were both indicted by a fed­eral grand jury for Con­spir­acy to Dis­trib­ute Metham­phet­a­mine and Cocaine, a vio­la­tion of Title 21, United States Code, Sec­tion 846. The Indict­ment also charged Kitchens with theft from an orga­ni­za­tion that receives fed­eral fund­ing, namely Spar­tan­burg County, in vio­la­tion of Title 18, United States Code, Sec­tion 666(a)(1)(A).

Kitchens and Lan­ford were arrested by mon­i­tor­ing DEA agents last week after meet­ing in a Spar­tan­burg restau­rant to allegedly exchange drug money. Author­i­ties allege that the drugs involved were stolen by Kitchens from the evi­dence room at the Spar­tan­burg County Cour­t­house, and then sold by Lan­ford to a man in Florida who was actu­ally work­ing under­cover for the United States Drug Enforce­ment Administration.

Mr. McDon­ald stated the max­i­mum penalty Kitchens and Lan­ford could receive on the drug charge is impris­on­ment for 20 years and a fine of $1,000,000. Kitchens faces an addi­tional max­i­mum penalty of 10 years in prison, and a fine of $250,000 for the offi­cial theft charge.

Mr. McDon­ald stated that the case was inves­ti­gated by agents of the DEA, the FBI, and SLED, and that he has assigned the case to Assis­tant United States Attor­neys Andrew B. Moor­man, Sr., and A. Lance Crick of the Greenville office for prosecution.

The Act­ing United States Attor­ney stated that all charges in this Indict­ment are merely accu­sa­tions and that all defen­dants are pre­sumed inno­cent until and unless proven guilty.

- — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — -
Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org