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CSI is a popular television
show on forensic evidence |
While hard figures on the phenomenon will still take a while to compile, the impact of television forensic science shows on juror expectations has already caught the attention of prosecutors and defense attorneys alike. This has immediate implications for case strategy and voir dire in criminal cases.
One of this television season's most popular shows is CBS's Crime Scene Investigation (CSI). The program features forensic experts as protagonists, and crime labs as the exciting source of unexpected plot twists. Investigators on the fictional show weekly solve cases solely on the basis of evidence collected at the crime scene.
As the popularity of the show (and its several spin-off series) grows, jurors across the nation are increasingly interested in DNA testing and similarly advanced evidence gathering techniques. While this makes it easier to keep a jury box focused on what used to be considered a dry, overly scientific and difficult topic to grasp, the "education" television's CSI provides is a double-edged sword: fiction can only come so far in teaching about the real world.
Impact on educating jurors
One problem is that juries familiar with the show will tend to think of themselves as knowledgeable in the area of forensics, though they posess no training whatsoever. In a world that is much more complex than what can shown in a one-hour television format, educating such juries on how to correctly interpret evidence may be much more difficult.
In a recent case in Phoenix, jurors demanded a blood-tainted coat be DNA-tested, even though whose blood was on the coat had never been in dispute.
Impact on case strategy
Because CSI is meant to entertain, it presents only a very narrow view of criminal evidence and its role in our legal system. On the show, forensic investigators are called in on every case, they always find evidence at the scene, the lab always succesfully analyzes it, and the results are always central to the outcome of a trial. This creates an unrealistic expectation, that can cut both ways: defense attorneys may find it's harder now to sell juries on the idea that a sample could be tainted, or a test result be false due to lab error. Prosecutors, on the other hand, may not get the convictions they used to, in cases where DNA tests or fingerprinting are impossible. Jurors may just not trust an argument built without forensics, something they never saw on CSI. This can be an opportunity to exploit for defense teams: Joshua Marquis, a prosecutor in Oregon, recently complained to USA Today that "Defense attorneys will get up there and bang the rail and say 'Where are the DNA tests?'"
Impact on jury selection
Given the above, attitudes on evidence, or lack thereof as the case may be, are more than ever important to root out during voir dire, or in a questionnaire when the court allows it. Asking jurors about their willingness to consider other factors than evidence, their trust in forensic evidence, and their familiarity with CSI, are now topics that should be considered during the jury selection process.
Long-term impact
Can this effect be expected to last, or is the interest in forensic science a passing fad? Regardless of its future, the current phenomenon cannot be ignored. In a recent case in Phoenix, jurors demanded a blood-tainted coat be DNA-tested, even though whose blood was on the coat had never been in dispute. Such knee-jerk reactions and more subtle attitudes derived from watching shows like CSI can be expected to be on the rise as ratings continue to skyrocket. Whether this prediction comes to pass or not, however, will only be shown by the hard data Trial Behavior Consulting continues to gather on juror television watching habits and their perceptions of forensics.
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