12 page paper on Evidence and liability relating. Written for CRJU 4400 class.

Essay by hopperdUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, April 2004

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David Hopper

CRJU 4400

Mr. Lansing

04/04/01

Evidence Liability

Evidence: Liability Faced When Detected, Gathered, or Presented Improperly

On December 25, 1996, JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her home. JonBenet Ramsey, a toddler model, had become famous by the press due to her simple beauty. JonBenet began receiving recognition nationwide and the terrifying news on Christmas shocked everyone. "Who could have committed such a crime?" is still a question that is asked today. Despite the numerous suspects that the Boulder police of Colorado mentioned, a great deal of evidence is directed to one person, Patsy Ramsey. One BIG reason no arrests were made were mistakes committed by the police department in gathering and processing the evidence of the case (Bellamy 2004).

Because of these mistakes, the killer is still at large, and free to strike again. This makes those officers liable, even if miniscule, to future murders because of blunders in the case.

This is not just a problem in remote incident in Boulder, it has happened elsewhere in recent history with OJ Simpson and certainly in ages past. When the police fail to gather, test, and handle evidence correctly they are placing themselves liable if the guilty person gets away with it or is never caught.

It is important to realize that unless something criminal happens, one shouldn't place blame squarely on the police's shoulders, and the police have a rough job and an unforgiving and usually ungrateful populace to deal with. However, tampering or just bad processing of evidence is a problem that needs to be faced in order to combat the liability the police place on themselves for it.

In the JonBenet Case, The police made a lot of mistakes in the investigation. For instance, they did not conduct a proper search of...