Kenya Hold its Second Legal Standards Training

Official opening of the training by Mr Patrick Omondi 
KWS Deputy Director for Species Conservation and Management, 
and Co-Chair of Barcode of Wildlife Project Kenya.

For the second time Kenya is holding a legal standards training that has brought together legal minds, scientists and law enforcement officers from different government agencies.

DNA evidence can be an invaluable tool for identifying and holding perpetrators accountable because it can provide critical information about the offender as well as verify the survivor’s account of what happened during the incident.

To maintain chain of custody, you must preserve evidence from the time it is collected to the time it is presented in court. To prove the chain of custody, and ultimately show that the evidence has remained intact, prosecutors generally need service providers who can testify:

•          That the evidence offered in court is the same evidence they collected or received.
•       To the time and date the evidence was received or transferred to another provider.
•        That there was no tampering with the item while it was in custody.

A presentation by Bill Clark, Chief of Interpol Wildlife Crimes unit

A challenge in proving chain of custody can arise when service providers fail to properly initial and date the evidence or fail to place a case number with it.

A sufficient chain-of-custody process, that is, one that provides sufficient evidence of sample integrity in a legal or regulatory setting, is situationally dependent.

The burden of proof

It’s the imperative on a party in a trial to produce the evidence that will shift the conclusion away from the default position to one's own position. He who does not carry the burden of proof carries the benefit of assumption, meaning he needs no evidence to support his claim. Fulfilling the burden of proof effectively captures the benefit of assumption, passing the burden of proof off to another party.

Ettah Muango KWS Legal Office gives her views on burden of proof

If there is a real doubt, based upon reason and common sense after careful and impartial consideration of all the evidence, or lack of evidence, in a case, then the level of proof has not been met. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt, therefore, is proof of such a convincing character that one would be willing to rely and act upon it without hesitation in the most important of one's own affairs. However, it does not mean an absolute certainty. The standard that must be met by the prosecution's evidence in a criminal prosecution is that no other logical explanation can be derived from the facts except that the defendant committed the crime, thereby overcoming the presumption that a person is innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Legal minds, scientists and enforcement officers discuss 

When evidence can be used in court to convict persons of crimes, it must be handled in a scrupulously careful manner to avoid later allegations of tampering or misconduct which can compromise a case of the prosecution toward acquittal or to overturning a guilty verdict upon appeal. The idea behind recording the chain of custody is to establish that the alleged evidence is in fact related to the alleged crime, rather than having, for example, been planted fraudulently to make someone appear guilty.

Chain of custody in legal contexts therefore, refers to the chronological documentation or paper trail, showing the seizure, custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of physical or electronic evidence.

Legal minds, scientists and enforcement officers discuss 

Establishing chain of custody is made of both a chronological and logical procedure, especially important when the evidence consists of fungible goods. In practice, this applies to illegal wildlife products which have been seized by law enforcement personnel. In such cases, the defendant at times disclaims any knowledge of possession of the controlled product(s) in question. Accordingly, the chain of custody documentation and testimony is presented by the prosecution to establish that the product(s) in evidence was in fact in the possession of the defendant.

Due to the fact that wildlife crimes are strict liability crimes, the standard of proof is lowered compared to penal crimes because the prosecution does not have to prove the criminal intent of the accused person. In criminal cases, the burden of proof for forensic evidence is the prosecution relying on the evidence meaning that all procedural aspects relating to that evidence must be followed to avoid any doubt being raised in the admissibility of that evidence.

Read the Kenya Defines Legal standards Forensic Evidence