The CSI Effect

The following is reprinted from Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader

CSI's Gil Grissom - via Wikipedia





The "CSI effect" occurs primarily inside the courtroom. Its first incarnation was referred to as the Perry Mason effect, based on the popular fictional defense attorney's trademark ability to clear his client by coercing the guilty party into confessing on the witness stand. During Mason's TV heyday, from the 1950s to the '80s, many prosecutors complained that juries were hesitant to convict defendants without that "Perry Mason moment" of a confession on the stand - which in real life is very, very rare. (Photo: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science, via The Perry Mason TV Show Book)

After Perry Mason went off the air, a new kind of law enforcement program appeared: the scientific police procedural (which started with Quincy, M.E., a drama about a crime-solving medical examiner that aired from 1976 to '83). But few cop shows have matched the success of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which debuted in 2000 and has spawned two successful spin-offs. A 2006 TV ratings study in 20 countries named CSI "the most watched show in the world."


Along with similar shows such as NCIS, Diagnosis: Murder, and Bones, CSI focuses on forensic evidence and lab work as the primary means of catching killers. These drama may be "ripped from the headlines," but when it comes to telling an entertaining story, certain liberties must be taken by the writers:
  • On television shows, detectives work one case at a time; in real world, they juggle a deep backlog of cases.
  • Experts who perform scientific analyses are rarely the same people who do the detective work and make arrests, unlike TV where one team tackles every aspect of the investigation. (And few real forensic scientists ever drive a Hummer to a crime scene.)
  • The almost instant turnaround of DNA tests is what TV writers refer to as a "time cheat," a trick necessary to get the story wrapped up. In reality, due to the screening, extraction, and replication process (not to mention the backlog), DNA test can take months. And the results are rarely, if ever, 100% conclusive.
  • Just about every murder investigation on TV leads to an arrest and conviction. In the real world, less than half of these cases are solved.
"If you really portrayed what crime scene investigators do," said Jay Siegel, a professor of forensic science at Michigan State University, "the show would die after three episodes because it would be so boring."


The main problem caused by the CSI effect: Juries now expect conclusive forensic evidence. According to Staff Sergeant Peter Abi-Rashed, a homicide detective from Hamilton, Ontario, "Juries are asking, 'Can we convict without DNA evidence?' Of course they can. It's called good, old-fashioned police work and overwhelming circumstantial evidence." In the worst-case scenarios, guilty people may be set free because a jury wasn't impressed with evidence that - as recently as the 1990s - would have led to a conviction.

In fact, many forensic experts find themselves on the stand explaining to a jury why they don't have scientific evidence. Some lawyers have even started asking potential jurors if they watch CSI. If so, they may have to be reeducated.

Shellie Samuels, the lead prosecutor in the 2005 Robert Blake murder trial, probably wishes that her jury had been asked beforehand if they were CSI fans. Samuels tried to convince them that Blake, a former TV cop himself (on Baretta), shot and killed his wife in 2001. Samuels illustrated Blake's motive: she presented 70 witnesses who testified against him, including two who stated - under oath - that Blake had asked them to kill his wife. Seems like a lock for a conviction, right? Wrong. "They couldn't put the gun in his hand," said jury foreman Thomas Nicholson, who along with his peers acquitted Blake. "There was no blood splatter. They had nothing." The verdict sent a clear message throughout the legal community: Juries will convict only on solid forensic evidence.

This new trend affects cops, too. CSI-watching detectives tend to put unrealistic pressure on crime scene investigators not only to find solid evidence, but also to give them immediate results. Henry Lee, chief emeritus of Connecticut's state crime lab (and perhaps the world's most famous forensics scientist), says that, much to the dismay of the police, his investigators can't provide "miracle proof" just by scattering some "magic dust" on a crime scene. And there is no machine - not even at the best-equipped lab in the country - in which you can place a hair in at one end and pull a picture of a suspect out of the other. "And our type of work always has a backlog," laments Lee, who's witnessed the amount of evidence turned in to his lab rise from about five pieces per crime scene in the 1980s to anywhere from 50 to 400 today.


The CSI effect doesn't stop at science - the entire judicial process is being presented in a misleading fashion. Mary Flood, editor of a website called The Legal Pad, asked a dozen prominent criminal lawyers to rate the most popular shows. Her findings: "Generally, they hate it when Law & Order's Jack McCoy extracts confessions in front of a speechless defense lawyers. Not real, they say. They go nuts over the CSI premise of the exceedingly well-funded, glamorous lab techs who do a homicide detective's job. Even less real, they say. And they get annoyed when The Closer's heroine ignores a suspect's request for a lawyer. Unconstitutional, they say."


In the real world, it's usually neither the crusading prosecutor nor the headstrong cop who solved the case. Most criminals, cops admit, are their own worst enemies. Either they don't cover their tracks or they brag to friends about what they did, or both. People tend not to think clearly when they commit crimes. But in the past few years there has appeared a new kind of criminal: the kind that watches CSI ... and learns.

In December 2005, Jermaine "Maniac" McKinney, a 25-year-old man from Ohio, broke into a house and killed two people. He used bleach to clean his hands as well as the crime scene, then carefully removed all of the evidence and placed blankets in his car before transferring the bodies to an isolated lakeshore at night, where he burned them along with his clothes and cigarette butts - making sure that none of his DNA could be connected to the victims. One thing remained: the murder weapon, a crowbar. McKinney threw it into the lake ... which was frozen. He didn't want to risk walking out on the ice to get it, so he left it behind. Big mistake: The weapon was later found - still on the ice - and linked to McKinney, which led to his arrest. When asked why he used bleach to clean his hands, McKinney said that he'd learned that bleach destroys DNA. Where'd he learn that? "On CSI." (Photo: Steve Schenk/AP, article at The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Using bleach to clean a crime scene was almost unheard of until CSI used it as a plot point. Now the practice is occurring more and more often. "Sometimes I believe it may even encourage criminals when they see how simple it is to get away with murder on television," said Captain Ray Peavy, head of the homicide division at the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. It's difficult enough to investigate a crime scene with the "normal" amount of evidence left behind.


So should these shows be censored? Should they tone down the science or, some have argued, use fake science to throw criminals a red herring? "The National District Attorneys Association is deeply concerned about the effect of CSI," CBS News consultant and former prosecutor Wendy Murphy reported. "When CSI trumps common sense, then you have a systemic problem."

But not everyone agrees. "To argue that CSI and similar shows are actually raising the number of acquittals is a staggering claim," argues Simon Cole, professor of criminology at the University of California, Irvine. "And the remarkable thing is that, speaking forensically, there is not a shred of evidence to back it up."

And furthering the debate about whether criminals learn from CSI, Paul Wilson, the chair of criminology at Bond University in Australia, stated, "There is no doubt that criminals copy what they see on television. However, I don't believe these shows pose a major problem." Prison, Wilson maintains, is where most of these people learn the tricks of their trade. So while law enforcement officials may agree that cop and lawyer shows do have an effect on modern investigations and trials, the jury is still out on exactly what that effect is.


The shows do have their positive aspects. For one thing, they teach basic science, saving the courts time and money by not having to call in experts to explain such concepts as what DNA evidence actually is. Anthony E. Zuiker, creator of the CSI franchise, is quick to point this out. "Jurors can walk in with some preconceived notion of at least what CSI means. And even if they are false expectations, at least jurors aren't walking in blind."

Perhaps most significantly, though, ever since CSI became a hit in 2000, student admissions into forensic field have skyrocketed. So even if Zuiker's show is confusing jurors, misinforming police, and helping to train criminals, at least it's proven to be an effective recruiting tool. "The CSI effect is, in my opinion, the most amazing thing that has ever come out of the series," he said, "For the first time in American history, you're not allowed to fool the jury anymore." (Photo: Mathieu Ramage [Flickr])

And finally, a message from Zuiker to anyone who walks up and points out his shows' inherent flaws: "Folks, it's television."



Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments

i just lawl at people....

FYI the correct saying is "I COULDN'T care less.
When you love someone naturally you could care less.
But when your caring for something is as low as it can get then you couldn't care less. Think about it.

We now return control of your set to you.
If you are going to flame please proof read...
"But when your caring for something is as low as it can get then you couldn't care less."

'...when you are caring for something IT IT IT IT is as low as it can get, then you couldn't care less.'

People are jackasses and just want to be correct yet they make mistakes them self... get over the hippo critical band wagon and be happy XD

and ty for giving me a lauffffff (SP ON PURPOSE HAHAHAHAA COREct mE POlz)!!!!
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A prosecutors duty is to prove the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. If the scientific tools are available there is absolutely no reason that they should not be expected to use them to prove their case. Numerous studies have shown that eye-witness testimony is spotty and barely reliable and heavy reliance on it in the past (and today) has led to the convictions of a countless number of innocent individuals. I would rather see a guilty party go free due to lack of forensic evidence than see an innocent go to jail under the same circumstances. If liberty is denied to even one individual who does not deserve it the system has failed.
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Personally, I think Robert Blake is a poor example of the "CSI Effect". His wife was villainized in the trial and I don't think the jurors really disagreed with his alleged motives for killing her. The lack of forensic evidence was just an excuse to find him not guilty...IMHO...
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I have a friend I met when she was working on her masters in Forensic Science and all these crime shows drove her crazy because of how unrealistic they are. She's obsessed with broadway musicals so I'm fairly sure she can tolerate unrealistic situations. What she despised was the influx of undergrad students coming in with preconceived ideas about the job field as well as those who took it because they thought it was like being the Jocks of the BioNerd World. She made it a rule that none of her students could make any references to these shows during class or in their papers.
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