IAPE Evidence Blog

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: DAVE HUGHES ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Van Buren, AR

FORT SMITH — A for­mer Van Buren police sergeant walked out of fed­eral court Thurs­day a free man after a judge sen­tenced him to time served fol­low­ing a fed­eral appeals court rul­ing that the judge’s sen­tence was too long.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Robert Daw­son told Mik­los Mol­nar, 49, he was free to go fol­low­ing a short hear­ing. After Daw­son left the bench, the court­room filled with Molnar’s fam­ily and friends broke out in applause. Some for­mer co-workers, includ­ing Van Buren Police Chief Ken­neth Bell, also were present and stood silently after the hearing.

Mol­nar, wear­ing tan slacks and a white T-shirt, spent the next few min­utes hug­ging rel­a­tives until a court secu­rity offi­cer told him he could leave the courtroom.

“I just praise God. That’s all I have to say,” he told reporters after the hearing.

Thursday’s hear­ing was sched­uled after the 8th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the five-year sen­tence Daw­son gave Mol­nar was too long, accord­ing to fed­eral sen­tenc­ing guide­lines. The court pointed out that, under the guide­lines, Mol­nar should have been sen­tenced to 10 – 16 months in prison.

Molnar’s attor­ney, Richard Bar­low of Van Buren, said after court that Mol­nar served more than 11 months in prison and that his one year anniver­sary would have been March 12.

Daw­son noted dur­ing the hear­ing that Mol­nar had paid the $50,997 resti­tu­tion he was ordered to pay dur­ing his ini­tial sen­tenc­ing Jan. 29, 2009, as well as a $3,000 fine and a $100 spe­cial court assess­ment. On Thurs­day, Daw­son ordered only that Mol­nar observe two years of super­vised release.

Accord­ing to the 8th Cir­cuit, Molnar’s ini­tial prison sen­tence was based on the erro­neous belief by Daw­son that some of the $50,997 Mol­nar took was des­tined to be used as under­cover drug buy money.

“With­out ques­tion, Molnar’s activ­i­ties impaired access to funds that ought to be rel­a­tively acces­si­ble,” Daw­son wrote in a sen­tenc­ing mem­o­ran­dum last year. “Not hav­ing the funds avail­able could then have sig­nif­i­cantly impaired local drug pre­ven­tion activ­i­ties.” Daw­son seemed eager to cor­rect the error Thurs­day as he addressed Mol­nar at the start of the hearing.

“You’re here sooner than I expected you’d be,” Daw­son told Mol­nar. “I’m glad you’re here.” Mol­nar, a 20-year vet­eran of the Van Buren Police Depart­ment, pleaded guilty in August 2007 to a charge of embez­zling money while work­ing as an offi­cer or employee of the government.

Mol­nar was a nar­cotics offi­cer for the Police Depart­ment and a mem­ber of the fed­eral Drug Enforce­ment Administration’s drug task force.

He was sus­pended July 2, 2007, after he told Bell he had taken money from the department’s evi­dence room. Bell had con­fronted him about money miss­ing from the evi­dence room which Mol­nar supervised.

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

OnlineAthens.com, Athens Banner-Herald
BYLINE: Mer­ritt Melan­con — merritt.melancon@onlineathens.com
Link to Article

Madi­son County, GA

Charged with theft, tam­per­ing with evidence

The Geor­gia Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion arrested a for­mer Sheriff’s Office inves­ti­ga­tor Mon­day on charges of steal­ing pre­scrip­tion pills from drug cases he worked.

Don­ald Glenn Carr, 45, of Danielsville, was charged with theft by tak­ing, tam­per­ing with evi­dence and vio­la­tion of his oath of office.

Carr is sus­pected of tak­ing pre­scrip­tion pills that had been seized as evi­dence in at least one drug case, accord­ing to Jim Fulling­ton, spe­cial agent in charge of the GBI’s Athens office.

Carr was booked into the Madi­son County Jail on Mon­day and later released on $10,000 bond. Both tam­per­ing with evi­dence and vio­lat­ing an oath of office are felonies, Fulling­ton said.

Carr, who worked for the sheriff’s office for 17 years, resigned at the end of Sep­tem­ber, cit­ing per­sonal issues, said Chief Deputy Shawn Burns.

Sheriff’s deputies didn’t know the pills were miss­ing until months after Carr resigned, Fulling­ton said.

An offi­cer logs evi­dence like drugs into a secure evi­dence locker, where it usu­ally stays until the case goes to court or until the defen­dant pleads guilty, Fulling­ton said. When offi­cers went to pick up evi­dence for a case Carr had inves­ti­gated, they noticed some items were miss­ing, he said.

“Some­body else went to retrieve the evi­dence from his cases, and that’s when they noticed that there were incon­sis­ten­cies there,” Fulling­ton said.

The sheriff’s office con­tacted the GBI last week about the miss­ing evi­dence, Fulling­ton said. Agents quickly nar­rowed their inves­ti­ga­tion to Carr, he said.

Two kinds of pills were miss­ing, but Fulling­ton would not iden­tify the types of drugs or how many came up missing.

The miss­ing pills came only from cases Carr had han­dled, he said.

The miss­ing evi­dence is going to affect the pros­e­cu­tion of at least one case, Burns said.

How­ever, it is too soon to tell how many other cases, if any, might be affected, both Burns and Fulling­ton said.

Pros­e­cu­tors might have to drop charges in some cases if the sheriff’s office can’t pro­duce the evi­dence, Fulling­ton said. How­ever, in some cases, pros­e­cu­tors may be able to move for­ward with­out one par­tic­u­lar piece of miss­ing evi­dence, he said.

The inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, but there is no indi­ca­tion that any­one else at the Madi­son County Sheriff’s Office was involved, Fulling­ton said.

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

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.

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‘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.

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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.

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