The chain of custody is a necessary condition for the reduction of the risk convicting innocents
Keywords:
Chain of custody. Fact-finding. Risk-reduction. Legal epistemology.Abstract
The subject of this paper is chain of custody of evidence. The introduction
of this institute in Statute 13.964/19 reflects the recognition that reliability is an
important characteristic of the pieces of evidence that will compose the set of evidence
to be valued by the judge for the determination of the legally relevant facts.
The function of the chain of custody of evidence, defined as the chronological documentation
of the evidence (which must be understood broadly), is precisely to guarantee
that the piece of evidence which the judge received in the phase of investigation
is reliable, was collected, cataloged, manipulated, conditioned, and transported
properly until it was brought to court; therefore, it can be used as a starting point for
evidentiary inferences. In the absence of legislation, I argue that the appropriate
phase for examining the chain of custody is the phase of admissibility; and, second,
that the consequence of breaking the chain of custody should be the exclusion of the
piece of evidence, avoiding its evaluation. The epistemic quality of the investigative
phase is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for a criminal trial seriously committed
to the reduction of the risk of convicting innocents.
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