Posted By belandrei on 29 Jun 2009 02:49 AM
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Jeff, actually it is not BRD standard, b/c it is not for conviction, but for purposes of admission of evidence. Standard for Judge is a lot lower, preponderance, his job is to find that there is >50 % chance that it was d's bag. If it is admissible jury can look and decide it the element of crime is proved BRD to convict.

 It is the question of conditional relevance, -prosecution needs to  lay down foundations to authenticate the E, i.e. to link it to Def. if it is >50%  chance it could be linked to the D, Judge should allow it for jury to decide on weight. That what happened on OJ trial (first one) they got blood samples all over place but cops screwed up with handling, chain of custody problem.

In this d's trial, there is gap b/w time it is picked up and conclusion it was coke, gap in time (check it says "later was found to be coke" not on the spot by coke licking cop) lab tech comes and testifies; yes. there was drug in the bag ###, but how do we know that it the same bag picked up by cops? Cops picked it up put in car, brought to station, left on table for 20 min with other evidence, other cop took the bag or some other bag? to the lab, nobody was at the lab, tech was on lunch, cop logged it in a wrong journal, wrong date. Analyzer broke in the lab, had to send it to dif lab, 2-3 more people involved,  they all need to testify re handling and how they traced and logged that particular bag, otherwise it irrelevant, mislabeled evidence.