Scenario: You are working a very disturbing case involving an individual who committed numerous heinous crimes against individuals. You have seen the individual’s disturbing images and videos while procuring forensic evidence from the perpetrator’s cell phone and the abundance of digital evidence stored on external drives and a home computer.
You were given the evidence after your predecessor was removed for not following the correct chain-of-custody procedures as outlined in the department’s standard operating procedures when gathering digital evidence.
While preparing the evidence for court, you find several irregularities in the way the evidence was secured for analysis. First, there was no write blocker installed, that would allow investigators to examine the data without risk of altering it.
You find still more irregularities that could make the digital evidence inadmissible in a court of law. Without the proper steps taken in the chain of custody, the court may find the evidence cannot be trusted.
Do you attempt to help convict this individual by going back and falsifying the chain of custody or do you allow justice to take its course? If the evidence is thrown out in court, who do you think will be blamed, you or your predecessor?
Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.