Opinion ID: 2979889
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Chain of Custody of Evidence

Text: Part and parcel with his Confrontation Clause claim, Briggs conflates a claim that the district court improperly admitted into evidence cocaine that Goosetree purportedly bought from him during the controlled buy and forfeited to the police. Briggs asserts that the United States never established that the cocaine actually came from Briggs, and that it should not have been admitted because he could not confront Goosetree as to its source. Although Briggs includes this claim in the section of his brief concerning his Confrontation Clause claim, and he states that he would have confronted Goosetree as to the source of the cocaine if he could have cross-examined him, this claim can only be treated as an evidentiary challenge to the chain of custody of the cocaine. Importantly, this claim only concerns the cocaine from the controlled buy and not the cocaine Goosetree purchased before his cooperation with police. No. 09-5953 USA v. Briggs Page 6 We review evidentiary issues for abuse of discretion. United States v. Allen, 619 F.3d 518, 523 (6th Cir. 2010) (citation omitted). “‘[A]n abuse of discretion is evident when the reviewing court is firmly convinced that . . . [a] district court . . . relies on clearly erroneous findings of fact, or when it improperly applies the law or uses an erroneous legal standard.’” Id. (quoting Ross v. Duggan, 402 F.3d 575, 581 (6th Cir. 2004)). Whether there has been a break in the chain of custody of evidence is a question for the jury. Id. at 525. A challenge to the chain of custody affects the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility. Id. “Physical evidence is admissible when the possibilities of misidentification or alteration are ‘eliminated, not absolutely, but as a matter of reasonable probability.’” Id. (citation omitted). A defendant cannot render evidence inadmissible simply by raising the possibility of tampering, and when the defendant presents no evidence of tampering, “courts presume public officers have discharged their duties properly.” Id. (citation omitted). Here, the police provided testimony at trial regarding the chain of custody of the cocaine purchased by Goosetree from Briggs. Before the transaction, police searched Briggs and supplied him with a vehicle so that they knew he had no cocaine with him. Goosetree then proceeded to Briggs’s home, made the purchase, and drove back to meet the police where he handed over the cocaine he bought from Briggs. Goosetree was under surveillance this entire time. On this testimony, the trial court admitted the cocaine as evidence. Briggs has only raised the possibility of tampering and has provided no evidence that the crack supplied by Goosetree to police was not purchased from him. In Allen, we faced a similar chain-of-custody challenge where the defendant alleged that the crack presented at trial was not the No. 09-5953 USA v. Briggs Page 7 crack from the crime scene because it was in a different bag (an evidence bag) and had diminished in weight. Id. At trial, the United States presented evidence explaining the new evidence bag and the lesser weight. Id. We held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the evidence because the defendant had only raised the possibility of tampering and provided no evidence of tampering. Id. Here, Briggs has alleged even less than the defendant in Allen. At least the defendant there pointed to reasons—differences in container and weight—why he believed that someone had tampered with the evidence. Briggs does not provide an alternate source of the evidence in his case. Neither does he provide evidence that contradicts the police testimony establishing chain of custody. Accordingly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the cocaine purchased by Goosetree into evidence.