The Evidence Was Already Broken Before It Hit the Courtroom Floor

I need to talk about what happened in that courtroom today. Because what the cameras showed you was dramatic enough. Evidence slides cracking. Attorneys on their knees picking up pieces. The judge clearing the jury. But the real story isn't the moment the slides hit the floor. The real story is that they were already broken before they ever got there.

They Knew It Was Damaged

The GBI's own witness, Ane Kiszler-Ralph, testified that when they inventoried these hair slides in February 2024, some of them were already damaged. Already cracked. Already compromised. Her team spent time taping slides back together, repackaging everything into new plastic boxes, and creating new labels for the containers. This wasn't a surprise discovery in the courtroom. The state knew these slides were fragile. They knew some were broken. And they brought them into that courtroom anyway.

Think about what that means. These are microscope slides containing hair evidence collected from Tara Baker's body in 2001. Hair recovered from her left hand. Her torso. A towel. For 23 years, those slides sat wrapped in paper towels inside a box. Not in proper slide holders. Paper towels. When the GBI finally opened that box in 2024, they found damage. They repaired what they could. They repackaged everything.

And then the prosecution walked those taped-together slides into a courtroom and asked a jury to trust them.

If This Is How They Handle Hair, What About the Rape Kit?

This is the question nobody in that courtroom asked today, but everyone should be asking. The same GBI crime lab that stored hair slides wrapped in paper towels for over two decades is the same lab responsible for preserving the forensic evidence in this case. The sexual assault evidence. The DNA.

Tara Baker was sexually assaulted before she was murdered. The state's entire theory rests on DNA connecting Edrick Faust to that crime. If the GBI's evidence preservation standards allowed hair slides to deteriorate to the point where they're cracking apart during routine handling, what does that tell us about how every other piece of evidence in this case was stored?

I'm not saying the rape kit was compromised. I don't know that. Nobody in that courtroom established that one way or the other today. But when a lab's preservation practices are so poor that evidence literally falls apart in front of a jury, you don't get to just move on and pretend the question doesn't apply to everything else that lab touched.

What the Jury Saw

Forget the legal arguments for a minute. Think about what those twelve people just experienced.

They watched the defense attorney put on blue gloves and start handling evidence slides. They watched something fall. They heard commotion. Then the judge sent them out of the room. When they came back, nobody told them what happened. Nobody explained that a slide cracked. Nobody told them whether the hair evidence inside was intact or destroyed.

They just saw chaos. And they're supposed to trust that evidence now?

Here's what makes this worse. The jurors aren't stupid. They saw the defense attorney handling those slides. Some of them are going to wonder if he broke them on purpose. Some of them are going to wonder if the evidence was already in bad shape. Some of them are going to wonder if 25-year-old slides should be trusted at all. And the judge gave them no guidance on any of it.

That visual will stay with this jury longer than any testimony about chain of custody procedures.

The Judge Got Cornered in Real Time

This is the part that should concern anyone who cares about due process.

After the slides broke, Cruz challenged the chain of custody. He pointed out that item labels on the slides didn't match the chain of custody report. Item number 12 on a slide said "hair recovered from debris with power module." Item number 12 on the chain of custody report said "sealed package identified as containing power transformer." Two different descriptions. Same item number.

Cruz moved for a mistrial. And the judge denied it.

But she didn't just deny it. She told the defense, essentially: I'm letting the evidence in, but you can argue the weight of the chain of custody issues to the jury.

Read that again. The judge acknowledged that there are chain of custody issues. She didn't say the chain was clean. She didn't say the defense's concerns were unfounded. She said the evidence comes in anyway, and the defense can argue about it.

And we all know which direction that tilts. Once evidence is in front of a jury, it's in front of a jury. You can't unring that bell. The defense can stand up in closing and talk about chain of custody gaps all day long. But those twelve people already saw the slides. Already heard the testimony about where the hairs were recovered from. Already absorbed it as part of the state's case.

Imagine for one second that this was reversed. Imagine the defense tried to introduce evidence with mismatched labels, a documented history of damage, and a chain of custody that couldn't account for 23 years of storage in paper towels. The state would have objected. The judge would have sustained it. The evidence would never have reached the jury.

But when it's the state's evidence? Weight, not admissibility. Argue it to the jury.

That's not equal justice. That's a thumb on the scale.

What This Means Going Forward

Edrick Faust hasn't been convicted of anything. He is presumed innocent. That presumption is supposed to mean something in a courtroom. It's supposed to mean the state carries the burden at every stage, on every piece of evidence, with no shortcuts.

What I watched today was the system taking a shortcut. Damaged evidence gets in. Mismatched labels get explained away. Chain of custody gaps become a matter of "weight" rather than a barrier to admission. The defense gets told to argue about it later instead of having the problem addressed now.

My father was a criminal defense attorney for 23 years. He went to prison for refusing to violate attorney-client privilege. He was convicted of unauthorized practice of law for helping people understand their rights from a coffee shop. He knew better than anyone what it looks like when the system decides the outcome matters more than the process.

This is what it looks like.

I'm not saying Edrick Faust is innocent. I'm not saying Edrick Faust is guilty. I'm saying the process matters. The rules exist for a reason. And when a judge acknowledges chain of custody problems but lets the evidence in anyway, that's not the process working. That's the process being bypassed.

Justice is a process. Today, that process failed.

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