IAPE Evidence Blog

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

greenvilleonline.com
Link to Article

Greenville, SC

More over­sight and stan­dard­ized pro­ce­dures would help clerks of courts bet­ter serve state res­i­dents and could help pre­vent a recur­rence of recent events in Spar­tan­burg County in which Clerk of Court Mar­cus Kitchens is accused of tak­ing drugs from an evi­dence room and con­spir­ing to sell them.

The clerk of court plays a major role in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The office’s duties include han­dling evi­dence, help­ing pick juries, col­lect­ing fines and dis­trib­ut­ing child sup­port pay­ments. How­ever, not every clerk of court office is run the same way. That in itself is a problem.

Offices like the one in Greenville County oper­ate effi­ciently and leave lit­tle room for the sort of malfea­sance that has allegedly occurred in Spar­tan­burg County. Oth­ers oper­ate less effi­ciently whether because of tight bud­gets, the inex­pe­ri­ence of those elected to serve or for other reasons.

All new clerks are given a state man­ual on how to per­form their duties. How­ever, Greenville County Clerk of Court Paul Wick­en­simer said in an inter­view that there’s lit­tle in the man­ual about han­dling evi­dence. The State Law Enforce­ment Divi­sion offers guide­lines for evi­dence han­dling, but clerks are not required to fol­low them and not all clerks do, he said.

State Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice Jean Toal is tak­ing the pru­dent step of begin­ning to develop stan­dards for inven­to­ry­ing, audit­ing and cross-checking evi­dence rooms. A good step would be to require all clerks to adopt SLED guide­lines for han­dling evidence.

In addi­tion, the state Clerks of Court and Reg­is­ters of Deeds Asso­ci­a­tion is work­ing to ensure every clerk under­stands the grav­ity of the job and ways they can ensure their offices are being as respon­si­ble and account­able as possible.

The asso­ci­a­tion meets twice a year and is plan­ning train­ing for its upcom­ing meet­ing that will address some of the issues that came up in the Spar­tan­burg County case, Wick­en­simer said.

Such train­ing is ben­e­fi­cial and should be manda­tory for all clerks of court.

Finally, the vot­ers have the final say. If a clerk — or any elected offi­cial — is not liv­ing up to expec­ta­tions, it’s up to vot­ers to send the right mes­sage by vot­ing him or her out of office. Clerk of court is an impor­tant fidu­ciary posi­tion and should be taken seri­ously. Vot­ers should ensure the peo­ple they elect are trust­wor­thy and qual­i­fied to admin­is­ter a large staff within an essen­tial office.

Cer­tainly there are seri­ous ques­tions to answer about any increased state scrutiny over a locally elected office. South Car­olina already is in a dif­fi­cult finan­cial posi­tion, so adding respon­si­bil­i­ties to any agency to more closely scru­ti­nize elected offi­cials would be costly and dif­fi­cult. Already, clerks of courts are sub­ject to var­i­ous audits that track their per­for­mance; and they’re respon­si­ble to county coun­cils for fund­ing and, again, to the vot­ers. All that said, it’s dif­fi­cult to argue against another layer of over­sight if it’s mean­ing­ful and the state can find a way to pay for it.

Short of that, the best way for tax­pay­ers to have con­fi­dence in their clerks of court is for there to be clear stan­dards, and sup­port from the state and other clerks in under­stand­ing those stan­dards. An informed elec­torate also is essen­tial to ensur­ing ade­quate oversight.

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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.

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