Collecting and Preserving Criminal Evidence

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http://caselaw.findlaw.com/sc-supreme-court/1219064.html

Supreme Court of South Carolina. The STATE, Respondent, v. Jeffrey Louis JONES, Appellant.

Part 1
Provide information on a notorious criminal case where shoe impression evidence was presented as evidence of special interest.

Briefly summarize the case.

This case is a significant case for using shoe impression and other impressions associated with the shoe in murder cases that could result in a person being sentenced to death, which was the case twice in this scenario. The case revolved around a defendant, Jeffrey Louis Jones (Jones) whose conviction solely relied upon the use of his alleged accomplice and "barefoot insole impression" of his shoe. The defendant was alleged to have committed two heinous murders in South Carolina wherein he and his alleged accomplice murdered two people at their home in a brutal fashion using a hammer and a brick. As a result of the expert testimony of the "two" experts in the field of barefoot sole impressions, the jury subsequently convicted Jones of two counts of murder, and one count each of first-degree burglary, armed robbery, and criminal conspiracy.   After the jury recommended the death penalty, Jones was summarily sentenced to die based on the barefoot sole impression evidence used at trial. Jones subsequently appealed his conviction because of the admissibility of the State's evidence, which purportedly matched Jones's footprint to the insole of a boot that was found to have allegedly left a bloody print at the crime scene. Jones appealed by arguing that the use of "barefoot" insole impression shoe evidence by the state wasn't scientifically reliable, and therefore, he was unjustly convicted. In addition, a major issue with the case was the use of the only "two" expert witnesses in the field of barefoot sole impression, which were both retained in this case. Jones argued that the state calling his retained expert witness as a witness violated the work-product doctrine, the attorney-client privilege and, more importantly, Jones's Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel. Both sides secured the services of one of the two experts in this field, the state retaining Robert Kennedy, and defense counsel retaining Bill Bodziak. The fact that the state called the defenses' expert witness even though the defense didn't use him was an issue of ...