Kane case scandal focuses on 'chain of custody' questions

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team is looking at how crime labs operate - how the chain of evidence could be broken and what that means in a rape case.

In the U.S., prosecutions are based on evidence. A foundation of justice is "chain of custody" - how evidence is collected, processed and stored so it can reliably be used in court.

The Patrick Kane case boils over with speculation and supposition and Wednesday's evidence bag scandal fits right in. No one seems to know what that bag is, how it got there or what it means.

"The jury has to know that this piece of evidence introduced in court - came from here, and here, and here from here, and if the chain is broken, there is a problem with introducing the evidence," said Richard Kling, defense attorney, Chicago Kent College of Law.

The evidence is a rape kit, medical equipment used to test Kane's alleged victim in Buffalo, N.Y., and analyzed at the Erie County Forensic Lab.

That process is part of the chain of custody; crucial in a rape case, where the testing kit is marked with identifying information and stored at the scene or in the hospital.

In a tamper-proof container, the person who packages is a neutral party uninvolved with the case; after the lab tests, the evidence is re-secured with a goal of proving the evidence that was tested is the same evidence introduced at trial.

These commercial evidence bags used by police normally achieve that.

But law enforcement across the country has been faced with a backlog of rape kit analysis, many times a challenge to effective chain of custody.

"If the evidence was properly inventoried and is still properly in the police department, it may be much ado about nothing," Kling said.

Tune in to ABC7 Eyewitness News at 10PM as the I-Team uncovers crime lab troubles in Illinois - from missing evidence to mixed-up tests and a pattern of forensic failures that may put thousands of criminal cases in jeopardy.