Courts battling CSI effect
By KATE BRASER
Evansville Courier & Press staff writer
Monday, December 4, 2006
While selecting a jury for a recent rape trial, Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Stan Levco asked potential jurors a question that raised eyebrows.
"Who watches shows like 'CSI' and 'Law & Order?' "
More than half the hands in the jury pool went up.
The question is one prosecutors say they almost always ask potential jurors now.
"Particularly if we don't have spectacular scientific evidence," Levco said.
The question is only the first step prosecutors take to explain to jurors that criminal cases in the real world aren't like those on popular television dramas.
In shows such as "CSI" and "Law and Order," investigators work fast and effortlessly to find stacks of scientific evidence such as fingerprints and DNA, which almost always leads to a conviction in a courtroom. The cases are open
and closed in less than an hour.
Almost every night of the week, some form of a legal drama can be found on at least one channel. The surge of legal shows and their popularity in the past decade have caused members of the legal community to coin the phrase "the 'CSI' effect."
"I don't know if it was literally when 'CSI' came on the air, but I think it's raised jurors' expectations unrealistically to what happens routinely," Levco said.
Deputy Prosecutor Donita Farr said speakers at legal seminars she goes to constantly emphasize the need to explain to juries the difference between television and real cases.
"They even recommend you have an expert come to the trial and explain why there is not physical evidence in a case if there isn't," Farr said.
Christina Wicks, a victim support specialist for the Albion Fellows Bacon Center, said legal dramas increase myths about sexual assault, too.
Wicks said that on television, sexual assault victims typically are shown being interviewed by detectives in hospitals.
"They always have cuts and bruises," she said. "That's why people think someone has to be beaten up and have signs of physical injury, when in most instances there is hardly any physical abuse or injury to a rape victim."
As part of her job as a victim support specialist, Wicks sometimes attends rape trials. She said in a recent case there was no physical evidence connecting the victim to the suspect, but "everything else pointed to him."
"He was still found not guilty," she said. "I was surprised. I think that was extremely due to the CSI effect, because there was no DNA."
Farr deals mainly with sex crimes, but said the "CSI" effect can be seen in all types of criminal cases.
"When you talk to the juries after trials, you find that they all wanted fingerprints to be found on the bullets," Farr said. "In real life, that just doesn't happen. They aren't preserved that way."
Farr said she often watches the legal dramas, but she is frustrated to see the fictional detectives swab an entire crime scene with cotton swabs and collect "gobs" of physical evidence.
"I love shows like 'CSI,' too, but they get their DNA results in a day," Farr said. "It's nothing like that in real life. It takes us months to get DNA back, at least."
On television, viewers watch cases solved within an hour, Wicks said.
"But in a courtroom, both sides have to put the puzzle together for the jury, so it is never as clear-cut," Wicks said. "I think that makes the jurors think more often they have reasonable doubt."
Farr said jurors' expectations make trials especially difficult in child-molesting cases.
"In child-molesting cases, 99 percent of the time there is no biological material," Farr said. Most victims of child molestation do not come forward until long after the crime takes place, she said.
Today, Levco said, his approach to a jury is two-fold.
"First is to educate the jury, if you can, about evidence collection," he said. "And if that is not the case, you eliminate those jurors who expect David Caruso to walk in and give them an open and shut case."
© 2006 The Evansville Courier Co.