Opinion ID: 2338879
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: admissibility of bullets and casings

Text: The four 9 mm. bullets and six 9 mm. casings allegedly found by the police at the scene of the crimes (see Part IV, supra) were admitted into evidence by the court subject to the defendant's motion to strike the admission of these exhibits if the state failed to establish, through subsequent testimony, the chain of custody and substantially unchanged condition of these items. Claiming that the state failed to satisfy those conditions upon which the exhibits had been admitted, the defendant contends that the court committed reversible error in failing to strike those exhibits as requested. The defendant's claim is primarily based upon the facts that the testimony of FBI agent James A. Porter, Jr., and Connecticut state policeman John R. Witte regarding the transportation of these exhibits to the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C., failed to account for a period of nine days in November, 1974, and one day in January, 1975; that Porter only identified the plastic vials in which these items were kept and which bore his initials rather than the contents of the containers; and that Witte never specifically testified that these exhibits were in substantially the same condition at the time of trial as when he found them at the murder scene. As we noted previously in this opinion, [e]ach and every circumstance in the chain of custody need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Chesney, supra. The state presented testimony detailing the transfer of these exhibits among various members of the state police and FBI; the marking of the vials and the items contained therein; the inventories of the items while in the possession of the police; and the security precautions taken to ensure against unauthorized access to these exhibits. Considering the nature of these articles, the testimony regarding the circumstances surrounding their preservation and custody and the likelihood of intermeddlers tampering with them, we cannot conclude that the trial court's denial of the defendant's motion to strike the admission of these exhibits constituted such a clear abuse of discretion so as to warrant reversal. See State v. Chesney, supra; State v. Johnson, supra, 232-33.