What we learned fact-checking this issue

In “Can Forensic Science Be Trusted?” (p. 44), Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes about the public’s reverence for forensic science, a feld that was given new prominence when the series CSI became a hit in the early aughts. That longrunning show, as well as its many spin-offs and look-alikes, offered viewers a glossy, high-tech vision of forensics—a world where compelling evidence is almost always available and savvy investigators produce conclusive fndings.

A number of studies about the so-called CSI effect fnd that familiarity with the show does not seem to sway jurors’ verdicts. Still, research suggests, watching CSI can influence jurors’ expectations about what kind of evidence should be presented in court.

Prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges are all alert to the potential pitfalls of such expectations—as I saw in trial transcripts I read while fact-checking Hagerty’s article. During a 2008 murder trial, an Ohio prosecutor asked prospective jurors if they could set aside their assumptions—“not feeling like Horatio [the protagonist on CSI: Miami] would have done this and that, and the other thing.”

Such approaches are not uncommon, as the law professor Tamara F. Lawson has noted.

One Florida judge routinely asks jurors before selection if they realize that some tests performed on CSI aren’t possible in real life, and confrms that they’d be willing to convict without Csi-style evidence. A Maryland judge has reminded jurors that “there is no legal requirement that the State utilize any specifc investigative technique or scientifc test to prove its case.” Anticipating that jurors will expect fngerprint evidence, prosecutors now frequently have a fngerprint examiner testify, even in cases where no prints were found.

As a prosecutor put it in his closing argument in that 2008 murder trial: “We live in a CSI age. We put on the show.”

— Stephanie Hayes, Deputy Research Chief