Herts cops 'ate the evidence' at scene of crime, court told Police may occasionally be accused of losing, abusing or even tampering with evidence – but eating it is almost certainly a first for any police force anywhere in the UK. Such was the allegation made by prosecutors at the Old Bailey, in respect of a case of torture and intimidation alleged to have taken place earlier this year …
It's not so much the eating, as the fact that the evidence was not treated as such. It was not logged as evidence, and was not properly preserved.
This makes it much easier to challenge in court. If it is the only evidence placing the suspects at the scene, that might mean a failed prosecution.
Vic.
...what matters is the linking of the phone number to the pizza order and delivery. And for that they will have the phone company logs, and the testimony of the pizza employee(s) involved.
So while the box's details may be dismissed as 'unsafe' evidence, the actual information is corroborated elsewhere, and I don't see why it would also be considered tainted.
Unless it had anchovies...they taint most things.
Paris - well put 2 and 2 together and you get...yes 69!
Prosecution: You ordered pizza's at such a time and date.
Defendent: Prove it.
Pros: Here are the boxes.
Def: Where the pizza, where were they kept?
Pros: The police ate the evidence and the boxes were in the boot of a car for a day.
Defence: I ordered no pizza (where are they) and someone probebrly scribbled thos notes on the boxes the next day.
Judge: Evidence is inadmisable as it is incomplete and incorrectly secured.
then they goto the pizza place directly to get the pizza order (most likely domino pizzas) as it will have the order on there systems for a long time (they still have my name and last order on there system for quite some time, when i reorder just tell them get the last one)
Clearly the evidence was on the pizza box, not the pizzas. If the police hadn't bought them cheap and the boy had gone away then the evidence would have been lost.
Of course it's possible to argue that they should have realised the significance at the time, but without knowing the context, it's difficult to say. However, what they didn't do is eat the evidence as clearly they weren't very partial to masticating packing materials.
cops inadvertently gather evidence.
if they hadn't done what they did, then the pizza delivery guy probably would have taken the evidence away with him and later disposed of them.
the officers both secured and retained the 'crucial' pizza boxes.
it was the boxes (and attached papers) that were the evidence, not the pizza. since the police didn't eat the pizza boxes, they didn't eat the evidence. see?
the fact that the evidence tying the perps to the location at the specific time was not treated as evidence.
If the evidence had been properly logged and dealt with, there would be much less chance for the defendants to argue that as it wasn't logged and recorded properly, the evidence is false.
It isn't either the fuzz ate the pizza and kept the boxes or the delivery boy took them back to the shop and disposed of them.
The alternate, and preferred option is that the filth had recognised the pizzas as evidence and secured them as such.
That the rozzers ate part of the evidence renders the entire evidence as suspect as others have already explained.
The dead husband was a copper about to leave his wife (pregnant or recently given birth), right at the end one detective walks back into the room, you think he's made the connection, but instead clears the serving dish into the bin.
Paris cause shes the closest thing to the dancing girl on Tales of the Unexpected.
He may well have made the connection (I can't remember if he's the one who says "The evidence must be under our very eyes") but decided that, given his recently-deceased-ex-colleague was quite the asshole, the already-taken course of action (i.e. eating the evidence) had best be pursued until the very end.
He could have phoned in on the way home.
If it is a flat, you'd give the name on the buzzer, not your own name.
And surely the records would be kept at the pizza shop's computers as well as the label.
I think it was more of a lucky find anyway rather than it being easily visible evidence on the premises.
Prosecution brief: Pizza Boy, did you write the accused's details on a pizza box.
Pizza Boy: Fo' shizzle, dawg.
Prosecution brief: Is this your writing on this pizza box?
Pizza Boy: Dems is my marks, man.
Oh, right, you forgot about these old fashioned things called "witnesses", right?
I fail to see how a pizza can be classed as evidence in this scenario. Can the pizza in question be used to prove that the suspect actually ordered it? If so, how are that going to happen. Since the suspect didn't receive the pizza (failure to deliver), no incriminating evidence was left behind in the form of saliva or finger prints or dental marks even. What also needs answering is the circumstance of the failed delivery. Was it because the suspect opened the door, saw the police, and ran, or was it because he heard the sirens a mile off and legged it before the pizza delivery guy even arrived? All this tells us is that "someone" ordered a pizza or two and it was to be delivered at said address.
Flame - cos I like my pizza flaming hot.
The fact that the pizza boxes were not properly indentified as evidence the moment it came into police hands makes everything else they discovered from it as tainted.
This, because it was not logged at the scene of the alleged scene of crime, it could have been tampered with by the boys in blue, who of course, do not have any previous anywhere for fitting people up.
Had the pizza boy not arrived, they would not have known a pizza had been ordered so they would not have investigated phone records.
And from a tech angle, a mobile phone will not give a specific location from a call log. All that can be ascertained is which mast it was made from, putting it in a general area, rather than the address.
I'm sure the court is fully empowered to decide what is, and what is not, allowable evidence. In this case I've no doubt there would have to be corroboration from the Pizza company and phone records as to the source of the order and delivery address plus witness identification who can attest to the hand writing.
You also don't look at something like this, or cell phone location information in isolation. Evidence is cummulative, so this may be just part of a picture. Ultimately it is for the court (and, most specifically, the jury) to decide on the credibility of this with the judge deciding what is, and is not, admissable as evidence.
It may be purely an American (Too much CSI in my TV diet) thing, but if the information obtained from the pizzeria was only gained because of the inadmissible evidence on the pizza boxes (failure to log/process, subject to tampering), then the chain of evidence is broken, and can't be used. If, however, they had got the details via questioning (and properly recording the details from) the delivery boy and followed the unbroken chain via him, the pizza boxes are irrelevant, and just made a good news story about porky plods.
Of course, I could be spouting utter shite here, but hey, that's US crime drama for you ;)
let me say, the delivery boy did not write the details down, they are on a printed sticker, which is automatically printed by the useless slow computers, the moment the pizza goes in the oven. On that sticker is the following details,
Customers phone number who made the order,
The date and time of the order,
The address where the order is to be delivered to,
Name of the pizza and any extra toppings,
And optionally, but not definately the buyers name, although if your paying cash you could use any name. Also if its a web order, the phone number will not be verified.
Also,
Anyone (say a nasty neighbour) or cops looking to set you up to say you were at the scene when you weren't, could use a phone number which hasn't been use to order a pizza before, and order a pizza to any address and if it was cash, the shop would be none the wiser.
As a mathematician, if I was a juror, I'd assess the credibility and weight of this evidence, and multiply it with the other evidence, and decide whether the answer was reasonable or not. Sort of.
I am assuming that the pizza company logs your phone number or phones you back on it to confirm precisely because of nuisance calls from mischievous neighbours and also from other pizza and fast food delivery companies, not to mention the local protection gang although with them it's probably best just to pay up on demand. With them you don't lose the fee, you lose a member of staff.
Reading the article, I fail to see what evidence the Pizza order represented. The police arrived at the suspect's home - not the site of the crime, so they already knew he lived there. The pizza was of no use proving that he actually lived there. The suspect had already decamped, so the pizza supplied no information as to his present whereabouts. So what's the point?
"key details were written on the pizza box including the suspect’s address, the time of order and a mobile phone number....
"It was only subsequently that the pizza boxes were found in the back of a police car and a phone number was found on one of them and it came to light that the officers had eaten the evidence.”
Would be extremely mouldy and stink to high heaven by the time the case got to court.
It was a clear duty of the police officers to remove material which may contaminate the actual evidence i.e the pizza boxes, and the best way of doing that was nom nom nom.....
Paris, because she's an expert at eating out...
In the days before Caller ID, and during a time when pizza parlors were busy, as during the telecast of a game, a great way to harass an enemy was to send him a pizza. That is, impersonate the enemy on the phone when calling in the order. The business would be too busy to call back, to verify the order.
Oops -- did I say "MY evil youth?"
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