TV homicides don’t reflect truth
Pursuits low-key; lab results take time, law officials say
By Ed Johnson
Fort Meyers News-Press
January 29, 2007
Television detectives can solve a murder in an hour — minus commercial breaks, unless it’s a two-part special. Real detectives don’t have it quite that easy.
The second double homicide in less than two weeks has put additional pressure on sheriff’s detectives to get results in a society that has come to judge police and prosecutors through the lenses of popular fiction.
Detectives and prosecutors say they straddle two worlds, trying to unravel crimes and battling the public’s expectation that answers should come fast and easy.
It’s a perception fueled by crime shows, police and prosecutors say, with little foundation in reality.
“The reality versus the fiction of shows like ‘CSI’ can raise the public’s expectations beyond what is real,” said Anthony Kunasek, an assistant state attorney based in Fort Myers.
Success at solving murders is often used as a benchmark of law enforcement effectiveness both in the real world and in fiction.
But there is a wide gap between the way fiction presents the investigation and prosecution of a homicide and its reality.
Detectives pound on doors asking questions and looking for witnesses, said Capt. Jim Jones, who oversees homicide investigation for the Lee County sheriff’s office.
Unlike television, the hunt is seldom exciting, he added.
Some of what’s portrayed in movies and television actually hinders prosecutors and makes added work for investigators.
Prosecutors talk of a “CSI effect” in jury deliberations. The phrase is a reference to the popular series where scientific evidence inexorably leads a criminalist to solve the most baffling case in an hour; less with commercials, of course.
Paradoxically, scientific advances have created more work, said Kunasek.
Not too long ago juries were satisfied to have their killers nailed on a combination of circumstantial evidence, testimony from witnesses and maybe an identification by a witness to the crime.
A fingerprint was nice, but most scientific evidence could say only that a suspect was not excluded, he noted.
That began to change in 1989 with the advent of DNA comparisons in England. That breakthrough upended the investigation of violent crimes, ruling out suspects circumstantial evidence accused, proving eyewitnesses wrong. In some cases, it freed innocent people wrongly convicted, some awaiting execution.
But DNA is not the panacea many believe.
“The whole concept of law shows on television has added a layer to our jury selection,” he said. “DNA is not always as conclusive as fiction would indicate.
“We have to elicit answers about reality and fantasy in jury selection. It adds time to the process.”
Prosecutors now call police witnesses to testify about scientific evidence that wasn’t found, he added.
There’s also a lot more DNA testing asked for now.
“In some cases it really isn’t an issue,” Kunasek said, “but today there’s an expectation there should be DNA somewhere.”
Jones has spent 10 of his 19 years with the sheriff’s office either investigating or supervising homicide investigations.
“Sure, things have changed,” he said. “DNA has given us another tool, but it doesn’t replace putting shoe leather to the road, finding those witnesses who can tell you what happened.
“Sometimes there’s a difference between ‘knowing’ who did the crime and having the legally accepted evidence that allows it to be proven,” he said.
“We believe we know who killed Whitney Mendez and Lorena Stone and I’m confident we’ll soon prove it,” he added, referring to the July 24 double killing in Lehigh. “In the real world crime scene technicians gather important physical evidence and the detectives ask the questions. TV sometimes shows the opposite.”
There are also instant results in the fictional lab.
“In a real investigation we have the frustration of waiting weeks or months for a lab report and then not having it say what we expect,” Jones said.
That frustration is being felt firsthand by the family of Everett White, 20, of Fort Myers.
White’s family said police suspect his is the charred body recovered in east Lee County. For almost three weeks that body has been with the medical examiner, unidentified. Detectives had hoped dental records would identify White, said his cousin, Amaris White. But those records were lost, she added, and police are relying on DNA testing. With laboratory backlogs, no one is speculating how long that will take.
North Port police had to wait about four months for the FDLE to complete some of its DNA analyses in the Sept. 17 Coralrose Fullwood homicide, and that case was a priority, North Port police Capt. Robert Estrada said.
There is still more evidence to be analyzed, he added.
Unlike their fictional counterparts, the FDLE lab in Tampa has a backlog of 880 cases, Larry Long, an agency spokesman, said in a recent interview. Still, cases continue to roll in at about 220 a month.
Police hope for quick arrests, said Fort Myers police detective Brant Gederian, but they continue to plug along on cases that are years old.
Fort Myers detectives recently had their efforts rewarded with an arrest in an 11-year-old case, he noted, one of three “cold cases” the department has solved in the last two years, he added.
Since homicide has no statute of limitations, the unsolved cases are never really closed, he added.
“Cold cases continue to be investigated and sometimes people talk more when some time has passed,” said Fort Myers police detective Jennifer LaDelfa.
Screenwriters have a show about that, too.