United States v. Olson
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
846 F.2d 1103 (7th Cir. 1988)
Clifford Olson (defendant) was charged with murder, and the prosecution sought to introduce bullets and bullet fragments taken from the victim's body; the FBI agent who unsealed and repacked the evidence for shipping died before trial, leaving no specific testimony about exactly how or when it was repackaged, and a lead fragment's chain of custody similarly lacked direct evidence linking the piece a police officer collected to the piece an FBI agent later handed off. Olson objected to both items on chain-of-custody grounds, but the trial court overruled his objections and admitted the evidence, and the jury convicted him.
Whether evidence is admissible if it is reasonably probable that the evidence has not been altered in any material respect in the chain of custody.