The button was a key piece of evidence that pointed to the defendant. It was torn from his shirt during the murder and was discovered at the scene. Detectives later executed a search warrant and retrieved a shirt in the defendant’s apartment that was missing a button. Forensic comparisons made it clear that the button at the crime scene matched the defendant’s shirt. But we had a problem.
Evidence Tampering
Defense attorneys sometimes insinuate that an officer has planted evidence in a case. In order to prove such an accusation, however, it must be demonstrated that
“(1) The [officer] willfully and intentionally … changed, planted, placed, made, hid, or moved … [a piece of evidence]. (2) The [officer] knew (he/she) was … changing, planting, placing, making, hiding, or moving … [a piece of evidence], and (3) When the [officer] … changed, planted, placed, made, hid, or moved … [the piece of evidence], (he/she) intended that (his/her) action would result in (someone being charged with a crime [or] [the piece of evidence] being wrongfully produced as genuine or true in a … court proceeding” (Section 2630, Judicial Council of California Criminal Jury Instructions, 2006).
The CSI officers were using a 35mm camera in 1985, and they were limited by their technology. They would typically use rolls of film that had twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six exposures each. As a result, I had fewer photographs than I would have liked (today our criminalists take hundreds of digital photographs with cameras that can store thousands of images). To make matters worse, photographers in 1985 had no way to preview the images they shot. They had to wait until the photographs were developed to know if they had images that were clear and focused. As it turned out, one of the most important photographs taken in this crime scene was the photograph taken of the button, and it was one of three photographs that were out of focus. The CSI officers shot only forty-eight photographs in total, and none of them displayed a clear image of the button.
“Come now, Detective Wallace, you know as well as I do that there isn’t a single image of the button at the crime scene. You continue to point to these blurry images and expect the jury to believe that they contain your most important piece of evidence?” He had a good point. We didn’t have a clear image of the button from the crime-scene photographs. In spite of this, we knew with certainty that the button was part of the murder scene. The first responding officers reported seeing it, and the detectives who arrived later also documented the button in their notes. CSI officers collected the button and booked it into evidence later in the day, along with other items from the scene and a number of items collected in the search warrant.
“Isn’t it true that the first time this button was mentioned in a formal police report was in the property report completed by CSI officers after the search warrant was served?”
His implication was clear. If the button was not photographed at the scene, there was no way to be certain that officers didn’t collect it at the search warrant, pull it from the defendant’s shirt, and later claim that it first appeared at the murder scene. The attorney was carefully making the case that detectives had lied about the button in an effort to tamper with the evidence and frame his client.
I was concerned that the jury might accept this devious explanation of the button, but my fears were misplaced. After convicting the defendant, the jurors later told us that they believed the testimony of the responding patrol officers, CSI officers, and detectives who mentioned the button in their notes. The jury was unwilling to believe that a conspiracy of this size (involving seven different officers from three divisions) came together to frame the defendant. They convicted him, in spite of the fact that we didn’t have a clear image of the button at the scene.
ESTABLISHING A “CHAIN OF CUSTODY”
Detectives quickly learn the importance of documenting and tracking key pieces of evidence. If the evidence isn’t carefully handled, a number of questions will plague the case as it is presented to a jury. Was a particular piece of evidence truly discovered at the scene? How do we know it was actually there? How do we know that an officer didn’t “plant” it there? These kinds of questions can be avoided if we respect and establish the “chain of custody.” Every crime scene contains important pieces of evidence, and these items of evidence must eventually be delivered to a jury for consideration when the case is brought to trial. Our button, for example, had to find its way from the crime scene to the courtroom. Along the way, it spent years sitting in our police property room and was also handled by a number of specialists until I eventually checked it out from property and transported it to court.
Each step in this process is a link in the chain that connects the crime scene to the courtroom. If I can demonstrate that the links are all connected and well documented, the jurors will come to trust the fact that the button I am showing them in court is the same button we discovered at the crime scene. In an ideal investigation, the officer at the scene, after discovering the button, would document the discovery in his notes and ask a CSI officer to photograph the item. The CSI officer would then collect the button and book it into evidence, carefully packaging it and documenting his or her efforts in a report. The property room would then accept the button into evidence, citing the date and time it was booked in, along with the name of the officer who booked it. Each and every time the button was then removed from property to be examined by an expert, those handling it would document the movement of the button. Reports would be written and property logs would be maintained to track the button’s movement from the point when it was first booked into property until it was finally checked out for trial. If this is done properly, the defense will not be able to claim that the button was planted.
Many of us still remember the infamous O. J. Simpson trial. Simpson was accused of killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and his defense team claimed that the police tampered with the evidence in order to implicate him. LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman testified that he found a bloodstained glove at the location where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered. He also testified that later in the evening he traveled to O. J. Simpson’s home and found the matching bloodstained glove on Simpson’s estate, along with a number of blood drops that were ultimately connected to Nicole. The defense argued that Fuhrman transported the items from the scene of the murder and planted them at Simpson’s residence. The chain of custody was at the center of the defense’s argument.
A NEW TESTAMENT “CHAIN OF CUSTODY”
Those who are skeptical of the New Testament Gospels offer a similar objection based on the chain of custody. The Gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. These accounts were eventually entered into the “court record” when they were established as Scripture at the Council of Laodicea in AD 363. It was here that early Christian leaders first identified and codified the canon of the Christian Scripture, the official list of twenty-seven books and letters that became the New Testament. No council, prior to this meeting in the fourth century, formally acknowledged the list of accepted books and letters (including the Gospels); no “courtroom” recognized the evidence of the Gospels prior to this important church-council meeting. If the life of Jesus could be considered the Christian “crime scene,” this council was undoubtedly the “courtroom” where the evidence of the eyewitness testimony was first formally acknowledged.
That’s quite an expansive period of time between the “crime scene” and the “courtroom,” don’t you think? A lot could happen in 330 years. I thought it was tough to trace and track the evidence in my cases, and they were only decades old! Imagine tracking the evidence for ten times as many years. Skeptics have considered this period of time and argued that the eyewitness evidence of the Gospels was “planted.” Like the defense attorney who argued that the button was added to the collection of evidence sometime after the crime occurred, skeptics often argue that the Gospels were written well after the life of Jesus. They
are not true evidence; they were manufactured by conspirators who wanted to fool those who were not at the “crime scene.”
The best way to counter this sort of a claim is to retrace the chain of custody to see if we can account for who handled the evidence from the point of the “crime scene” to its first appearance in the “courtroom.”
EVIDENCE, HISTORY, AND REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS
While it may sound like an easy task to trace the chain of custody, it can be extremely difficult in cases that are very old. This is often my dilemma as a cold-case detective. When I open a case from the past, the first thing I try to do is collect all the original documents that were written during the first investigation. That should be easy, right? Well, not always. While these cases were important to our agency, there are times when unexpected issues, unrelated to the investigation, can make this task difficult. Sometimes things are lost when a records database is upgraded as the result of new storage technology. Sometimes notes or other reports have simply deteriorated to the point that they are no longer usable. Sometimes documents are accidentally destroyed or purged. The longer an event slips into the past, the more likely I may have a problem retrieving all the information I need to trace the chain of custody. In spite of this, I have been able to assemble enough of the chain of custody to demonstrate a level of responsibility to the jury. Given the age of the case, jurors understand that we simply cannot expect the same level of precise record keeping when outside forces cannot be controlled over long periods of time.
Something very similar happens when trying to trace the chain of custody for the gospel eyewitness accounts. Imagine trying to control outside forces for thousands of years instead of just a few decades. The “original reports” in the “Christian cold case” were written on papyrus, an excellent material if you are looking for something that was readily available in the first century, but a terrible material if you are looking for something that won’t fall apart when handled frequently. As a result, we no longer have the original writings (sometimes called “autographs”). The first eyewitness accounts were copied repeatedly so that they could be distributed throughout the church and retained in spite of the nature of the papyrus that was available. It’s now difficult to precisely retrace the movement of the Gospels over time and establish a chain of custody.
In order to have any success at all, we first need to identify the players who would be involved in such a chain. In cold-case homicide investigations, the links in the chain include the responding officers, the crime-scene investigators, the first detectives, the criminalists, and then the cold-case detectives, who ultimately bring the case to the prosecutor. But who would we expect to be involved in the gospel chain of custody?
To trace the New Testament Gospels, we are going to need to identify the original eyewitnesses and their immediate disciples, moving from one set of disciples to the next until we trace the Gospels from AD 33 to AD 363. The New Testament gospel chain of custody, if it exists, would provide us with confidence that the accounts we have today are an accurate reflection of what was observed at the “crime scene.” This link-by-link approach to the history of the accounts would also help us respond to the objections of skeptics who claim that the Gospels were planted late in history. We will examine this issue in much more detail in section 2, and we will identify the historical links in this important chain.
A TOOL FOR THE CALLOUT BAG, A TIP FOR THE CHECKLIST
As a detective, I quickly learned the importance of the chain of custody, and I eventually pulled this principle from my callout bag as I investigated the reliability of the Gospels. Before I became a Christian, I seldom held the same level of skepticism for other ancient documents that I held for the biblical accounts. I can remember having an intense interest in ancient history from the time I was in high school. I had an “honors” class with a wonderful, sage-like teacher, Mr. Schultz, who had the ability to bring the past to life using the ancient written histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, among others. He taught from these accounts as if they were reliable and true, and I accepted them without much question. Mr. Schultz never talked about the fact that the earliest copies we have for these ancient writers appear in history approximately five hundred years after the events they claim to describe. There is no clear chain of custody for these historical accounts during this period of time. We don’t know whom Herodotus, for example, entrusted with his writings. We don’t know how Herodotus’s record was preserved or what happened to it during these five hundred years. This is, of course, the nature of the vast majority of ancient historical accounts. Given that we accept these accounts as historically factual even though their history of transmission is missing for five centuries or more, wouldn’t it be fair to reconsider our historical view of the gospel record if we discovered that the Gospels have a verifiable chain of custody? We need to keep this question in mind as we get ready to examine the issue more thoroughly in section 2.
Of all the documents written by Christians in the first and second centuries, the texts we most care about are those that made it into the canon of Scripture. Few of us are familiar with the noncanonical writings from the earliest period of Christian history. Many early Christian leaders wrote letters and documents that, while not considered canonical, are rich with theological content and historical detail. These noncanonical early church documents can tell us much about the teaching of the original eyewitnesses. They will eventually become part of the chain of custody as we examine the transmission of the Gospels in the first three centuries. We would be wise to have at least some understanding of the identity of the students and disciples of the apostles and some mastery of their writings. Many of these men (like Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement) became known as the “early church fathers.” They led the church following the deaths of the apostles, and their letters and writings are widely available online and in print form. The earliest works of these church fathers are often interesting and enriching. They are worth our time and effort, particularly as we make a case for the New Testament chain of custody and the reliability of the Gospels as eyewitness accounts.
Chapter 9
Principle #9:
KNOW WHEN “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”
“I wasn’t convinced,” said Juror Number 8 as he looked across the table at the other jurors. Some of them laughed and shook their heads. Juror Number 8 stood his ground. “Hey, this is a big deal to me. I needed to be sure.”
We sat together in the jury room, relaxing around a long table after the trial concluded and the verdict had been read. The jurors were assembled and eager to ask us questions. They looked exhausted but relieved. The trial took six weeks, and this jury conscientiously deliberated for another week before delivering a guilty verdict. I was nervous when the deliberation stretched beyond the first two days; I suspected that one (or more) of the jurors was delaying the verdict and that we might be headed toward a “hung jury.” In California criminal trials, all twelve jurors must agree on the outcome. If there are any holdouts, no verdict will be reached and the case must be retried if the prosecutor hopes to convict the defendant. The longer the deliberation, the more likely the jury is divided. I was beginning to fear that the group was hung until the court clerk called us and told us that we had a verdict.
In all honesty, I thought the decision would come back much sooner. This case was overwhelming. We had nearly forty pieces of evidence that pointed to the defendant as the killer. In fact, he was actually caught trying to commit a very similar crime about ten days after he killed the victim in our town. He even had a knife that matched our victim’s injuries when he was caught in this second crime. The case was robust and clear; I thought the jury would come back with a decision in less than a day. I typically join the prosecutor and interview the jurors following their work on one of our cases because I want to learn from their observations. What was evidentially powerful? What was relatively insignificant? What was it that finally “made the
case” for them? Today I was eager to learn why it took them so long to come to a conclusion. They told me that after reviewing the evidence and taking their first vote, Juror Number 8 was the sole holdout. While everyone else was convinced the defendant was guilty, Juror Number 8 was not so sure.
“I take that ‘reasonable doubt’ stuff seriously,” he said. “I mean, my gut was telling me that he was guilty, but I wasn’t sure if we had enough evidence to make the ‘standard’ that the judge was talking about. I just needed to see the evidence one more time.”
“What was it that finally convinced you?” I asked.
“The Band-Aid.”
The Band-Aid? Really? I could hardly believe it. When the defendant committed the murder, he cut his finger. He went home and bandaged the injury and was wearing this Band-Aid when the detectives later interviewed him. He didn’t want the detectives to notice the injury, so he slipped off the Band-Aid and left it in a corner of the interview room. The detectives noticed and collected the bandage only after the interview was completed. We later had the Band-Aid tested for DNA to demonstrate that it did, in fact, belong to the defendant. But I never considered this bandage to be an important part of the case. In fact, the prosecutor almost didn’t include it in the presentation to the jury. Now I was very glad that he did.
WHERE’S THE TIPPING POINT?
You never know the impact that a particular piece of evidence will have on those who are considering your case. Sometimes the things that don’t matter much to you personally are the very things that matter the most to someone else.
I’ve been producing a podcast and hosting a website (PleaseConvinceMe.com) for several years now, and people email me with their questions and doubts related to the evidence for the Christian worldview. Skeptics sometimes write to inform me that they simply don’t believe there is enough evidence to prove that God exists. Christians sometimes write to tell me that they are struggling with doubt because they aren’t sure if the evidence is sufficient. In many ways, all of these folks are struggling with the same question that jurors face in every case. When is enough, enough? When is it reasonable to conclude that something is true? When is the evidence sufficient?
Cold-Case Christianity Page 13