Evaluation of the Value of the Team Members

When ensuring that a secure audit trail of evidence is established, it can be concluded that some of the members of the investigation team would have been of more value than others. Primarily the most valuable members of an investigation team when securing an audit trail would be the police and the scenes of crime officers. The police would be seen as valuable as they are tasked with ensuring that from the point in which they attend to a crime scene, until any evidence is collected they have to make sure that they protect the scene and the evidence in order to prevent contamination occurring – allowing the evidence to be collected in the same condition that it was in when it was originally found. As this is a highly important role in ensuring that a secure audit trail is established the police as members of an investigation team can be seen as very valuable. However within the investigation of the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman the police failed to ensure that the scene remained secure – allowing large amounts of people into the scene who didn’t need to be there, also the police handled evidence without wearing PPE, therefore actually contaminating evidence themselves. It can therefore be concluded that within this investigation although the police should have been one of the most valuable team members they proved to actually be not very valuable at all – with there mistakes contributing to the acquittal of Simpson, even though there were large amounts of evidence indicating his guilt.

The other members of an investigation team which have been identified as being valuable in the ensuring that a secure audit trail is established is the scenes of crime officers. They can be seen as valuable team members as if they carry out their job role correctly which involves correctly collecting, packaging and labelling evidence and then submitting it to the exhibits officer to be checked into the chain of custody a secure audit trail will most likely be effective. However as identified within the OJ Simpson case the scenes of crime officers made many mistakes that led to the contamination and cross-contamination of evidence, it also led to the jury being able to question the reliability of any of the evidence as they made so many mistakes. It can therefore be concluded that although they should have been one of the most valuable team members the scenes of crime officers did not carry out their jobs correctly or effectively – leading to the majority of the evidence that they collected being thrown out and dismissed in court – leading to the acquittal of Simpson.