Let's see what material evidence is. These are some objects in the material world that have left visual or invisible changes in their own states or properties. They are able to convey information about various circumstances. Material evidence is used in criminal proceedings. They are collected, verified and evaluated.
Material evidence may also be used in civil proceedings. Their essence, in contrast to other sources of evidence, which contain a verbal description of one or another person of a certain circumstance, consists in a direct reflection that matters in the case.
Describing material evidence as objects that serve as a means to establish significant circumstances in the case, the legislator also identifies some categories that are extremely common in investigative and judicial practice. These include items that can be used as evidence. It can be tools and means for committing a crime (all items used by the criminal to achieve a socially dangerous goal, and their intended purpose is not taken into account).
These include guns to commit murder, items involved in the theft of wealth. It’s also tools in poaching (firearms or knives for hunting, traps, nets, etc.) It can also be objects that retain various traces of the crime. It can be clothes with bloody traces or mechanical damage that occurred during the commission or any other crime, this also includes items with gunshot or explosive damage - a hacked door during theft from an apartment, a hacked safe, etc.
Items that have become objects of unlawful actions. This is a stolen car, stolen money or securities or other values and things of the material world. In addition, these are various weapons, psychotropic and narcotic substances, etc., as well as material assets or other values acquired as a result of criminal activity.
The entire list of items that can be included in the status of “material evidence”, initially unrealistic to determine. This also includes items that bear traces of the preparation of the crime itself. This is evidence of the person’s presence in the place of the criminal act, and traces of his shoes, and packaging elements for parts of the human body, and traces of the repair of any room, car, where the crime was committed.
Documents can also be material evidence in cases where they became the object of a crime, were the means in its preparation, commission, as well as when traces of such actions remained on them. All this evidence is seized and declared material.