Today’s lecture on Cross of the Chain of Custody Witness was presented by Houston DWI Lawyer Tyler Flood.
A very good showing. It was in the Q & A style of a cross examination, so a bit hard to put into a blog the exact questions. But here are some of the points brought up, that should be explored with the witness:
- Get the SOP of the police department. You can find (sometimes) their procedures of how things should be done. Tyler did this with Houston PD. It seems like he then tailored his questions to the witness to explore if they were done. I presume after his cross, he would cross an officer on the correct procedures to bust up the chain of custody
- Tyler went through exactly step by step where the sample was, who it was handed to and where it was stored
- Was it refrigerated? If it was, what about when you pull it out to put it in a cooler? How long out? What about when you brought it to the police station?
- What about other sample’s proximity to your client’s sample? Do they stuff everyone’s in an envelope, cooler, or lockbox? Who else’s samples were in there?
- Examine all the numbers on who is signing in and out items? What if they were mailed? See if a bunch of them were all sent in the same envelope?
- Is special handling checked off??
- What about biological hazard stickers?
- (From the last lecture, does this mean the sample is being inverted more than it should have been?)
Great job overall on this part of the lecture.