Intellectual Property Law

How do police prove that property is stolen?

If a defendant is in possession of a number of items that match those stolen during a burglary, but the serial numbers have been removed from the items, how can police prove the defendant does not own them? They may check his finance records, but I'd assume there'd be reasonable doubt that he could have received the items as gifts.

Public Comments

1. Answering this question might give you an advantage in court.
2. Serial numbers may be 'raised' with forensics tools. Or other ways to prove he did not buy them are by checking his finances 'forsencially' too they have people who 'follow the money' real good
3. i was reading this question and at first i though that maybe there would be some sign of ripping the serisl number off or something.Then i also thought that they could run a check through that person's checks or transactions.They would probably ask for a receipt or something
4. It depends on high many items you are talking here. I mean how ironic is it that most of the items that had been stolen is at defendant's house. Most of the time, police won't take time to resolve burglary unless it has to do with huge amount of money. Also you need to prove us with much more details of how defendant got caught by the police officer. Did police officer had proper ways? did they go by the book? did they have warrants to enter defendant's house? etc Sometimes the law enforcement play "good cop and bad cop". They will get into your head and play you, fool you until you agree that you had stole those item. this is why fifth amendment came to save us all.