As this brief from the O. J. Simpson Civil Trial makes clear, the law is not nearly so rigid.
Our resident self-appointed "law-professor" strikes again....
What anybody who understands even the most basic things about the law knows is that in law very little is ever cut and dry. That's why there is jurisprudence. There is no point in finding some quote on the internet and present it as if it has any relationship with another case. Even two cases who look identical could nevertheless have different outcomes,
The National Institute of Justice said this about a chain of custody;
The reason for establishing a chain of custody is to prevent substitution of, tampering with, mistaking the identity of, damaging, altering, contaminating, misplacing or falsifying the evidence.
This principle and procedure creates legal integrity of the evidence. The chain of custody verifies both the legal integrity and the authenticity of all evidence. Without proof of an intact chain of custody, the evidence may be excluded from trial or afforded less weight by the trier of fact.
Yet, our resident self-appointed legal eagle basically says that COP SAID SO would be enough to ignore or by pass the chain of custody. Hilarious!
...or afforded less weight by the trier of fact.
At the very least the quote from The National Institute of Justice says without a solid chain of custody, evidence is afforded less weight. Doesn't mean it's necessarily excluded.
You'd have to fight very hard to remove the jacket from evidence.
1. Earlene Roberts saw Oswald zipping up a jacket.
2. Benavides saw Oswald wearing a jacket.
3. Callaway positively identified Oswald and wearing a jacket.
4. Markham positively identified Oswald and wearing a jacket.
5. Virginia Davis positively identified Oswald and wearing a jacket.
6. Barbara Davis positively identified Oswald and wearing a jacket.
7. Scoggins positively identified Oswald and wearing a jacket.
8. Mary Brock positively identified Oswald and wearing a jacket.
9. Sam Guinyard positively identified Oswald and wearing a jacket.
10. Westbrook recovered Oswald's jacket and later positively ID'd it.
11. Marina identified the Jacket.
12.
Oswald is arrested without his jacket,
where did it go? The prosecution would drag out all of the above eyewitnesses and the defence would be left with trying to disprove each and every eyewitness to what they saw. Good luck with that. And at the end of the day the jacket is only a fraction of the evidence in what convicts Oswald for the murder of Tippit, so I can understand why the CT's try so hard to isolate the Jacket evidence, because it's all you got!
JohnM