Anyone who has had the privilege (or obligation) of sitting through a criminal trial voir dire in the past few years has probably heard a prosecutor decry the CSI series of TV shows. People who watch those shows, it is presumed, develop an unrealistic expectation of crime scene investigations.
In The “CSI effect”, the Economist.com cites research by Evan Durnal which purports to show that there is indeed a CSI Effect. To wit:
According to Mr Durnal, prosecutors in the United States are now spending much more time explaining to juries why certain kinds of evidence are not relevant. Prosecutors have even introduced a new kind of witness — a “negative evidence” witness — to explain that investigators often fail to find evidence at a crime scene.
But Mr. Durnal, or perhaps the Economist, went slightly askew. The article cites as an example of the CSI Effect a juror's wrong headed analysis, but in fact the juror may have been onto something. The situation involved a defendant in a murder trial and a bloody jacket. The jacket was not DNA tested, and a juror thought it should have been. Excerpt:
Since the defendant had admitted being present at the murder scene, such tests would have thrown no light on the identity of the true culprit. The judge observed that, thanks to television, jurors knew what DNA tests could do, but not when it was appropriate to use them.
Whoa, not so fast. That's exactly what's going on in the case of Henry (Hank) Skinner -- the Texas death row inmate whose defenders are now screaming bloody murder because DNA testing was not conducted on bloody clothing found at the crime scene. The theory in the Skinner case is that the DNA will implicate someone other than Skinner. Maybe, maybe not. Better to test and remove all doubt than not test, execute and wonder.
So maybe the CSI Effect isn't such a bad thing. It really depends on the juror and his/her ability to think rationally.
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