History Main / TheCSIEffect

One notorious case down in Texas involved a man who was convicted on the basis of his lip prints -- a method of identification that has been widely considered unreliable for decades. Even worse, a man in Oklahoma spent almost two decades on ''death row'' for a crime that it was later proved he didn't commit. The primary evidence against him, aside from blatantly specious interrogation tactics? The shape of his hair follicles, a mode of identification that was proven useless in 1885, ''over a century'' before the murder took place.

People's perception of crime and criminal investigations being colored by crime and legal dramas definitely [[OlderThanTheyThink predates]] ''[[OlderThanTheyThink CSI'']] [[OlderThanTheyThink by decades]], nor is it unique to forensics. ''Franchise/PerryMason'' led to some juries in the 1960s not convicting unless [[ThePerryMasonMethod they saw the accused confess in court]]. ''Series/QuincyME'' and ''Series/LawAndOrder'' have been accused of distorting people's ideas of criminal investigation, and ''Series/JudgeJudy'' was [[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297332595_Should_we_blame_Judge_Judy_The_messages_TV_courtrooms_send_viewers singled out by academic papers]] for causing many Americans to misunderstand the purpose and role of the judge in courtroom trials. The series ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'' has its own namesake "effect," where its [[JackBauerInterrogationTechnique depiction of torture]] allegedly caused the American public to think that TortureAlwaysWorks. [[Website/{{Wikipedia}} The other wiki]] also has a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect featured article on this topic]].

People's perception of crime and criminal investigations being colored by crime and legal dramas definitely [[OlderThanTheyThink predates ''CSI'' by decades]], nor is it unique to forensics. ''Franchise/PerryMason'' led to some juries in the 1960s not convicting unless [[ThePerryMasonMethod they saw the accused confess in court]]. ''Series/QuincyME'' and ''Series/LawAndOrder'' have been accused of distorting people's ideas of criminal investigation, and ''Series/JudgeJudy'' was [[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297332595_Should_we_blame_Judge_Judy_The_messages_TV_courtrooms_send_viewers singled out by academic papers]] for causing many Americans to misunderstand the purpose and role of the judge in courtroom trials. The series ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'' has its own namesake "effect," where its [[JackBauerInterrogationTechnique depiction of torture]] allegedly caused the American public to [[TortureAlwaysWorks overestimate its effectiveness]]. [[Website/{{Wikipedia}} The other wiki]] also has a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect featured article on this topic]].

These steps are usually relatively simple, such as picking up spent shell casings, or wearing gloves. Some criminals have deliberately planted DNA samples from other plausible suspects to derail any investigation. In [[http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/psychology/csi_effect/5.html one particularly extreme case,]] Jermaine [=McKinney=] of Ohio committed a double murder, then cleaned the crime scene (and himself) with bleach to destroy DNA traces, bundled the bodies before transporting them and lined his car trunk with plastic to prevent fiber and blood contamination, collected his cigarette butts and took numerous other steps; he was only caught because he was unable to dispose of his murder weapon (a crowbar) in an unexpectedly frozen lake and simply left it sitting on the ice.

People's perception of crime and criminal investigations being colored by crime and legal dramas definitely [[OlderThanTheyThink predates ''CSI'' by decades]], nor is it unique to forensics. ''Franchise/PerryMason'' led to some juries in the 1960s not convicting unless [[ThePerryMasonMethod they saw the accused confess in court]]. ''Series/QuincyME'' and ''Series/LawAndOrder'' have been accused of distorting people's ideas of criminal investigation, and ''Series/JudgeJudy'' was [[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297332595_Should_we_blame_Judge_Judy_The_messages_TV_courtrooms_send_viewers singled out by academic papers]] for causing many Americans to misunderstand the purpose and role of the judge in courtroom trials. The series ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'' has its own namesake "effect," where its [[JackBauerInterrogationTechnique depiction of torture]] allegedly caused the American public to [[TortureAlwaysWorks overestimate its effectiveness]]. [[Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} The other wiki]] also has a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect featured article on this topic]].

A particular form of RealityIsUnrealistic. First coined and covered by the media in the mid-2000s, the TropeNamer is ''Series/{{CSI}}'', a widely popular and long-running franchise of police procedurals that focuses on criminal forensics. It's also attributed other crime dramas that aired in the wake of ''CSI'''s success, such as ''Series/CriminalMinds'', ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', and ''Series/{{Bones}}''.

It was originally used in a negative light, blaming the show's HollywoodScience for giving real-world juries false expectations about the importance and accuracy of forensic evidence. This page, however, uses the term a bit more broadly, for all major cases, positive or negative, of how the popularity of crime shows impacts how the public approaches crimes, how killers commit them, and how the legal system prosecutes them.

A particular form of RealityIsUnrealistic wherein a particular work is shaping the ways that crime is perpetrated, discovered, and prosecuted. It shows up in a number of ways:

It was first reported in the news media in 2005. The TropeNamer is ''Series/{{CSI}}''; it, its [[SpinOff spinoffs]], and its imitators have led juries to refuse to consider any evidence trustworthy except for the most comprehensive, and to equate its absence with reasonable doubt. Whether or not this is actually true, or that CSI caused this if it is, doesn't matter to us. It is what the trope is called, that's all. Interestingly, the Season 15 opener of ''CSI'' was called "The CSI Effect"!

Collecting this super-evidence takes much less time InUniverse in ''Series/{{CSI}}''-like stories than it does in RealLife because of time compression -- both to make the show fit in an hour with ads and to let a season take less than a few years InUniverse. In the show, DNA tests work in hours; in RealLife, it can take months (a DNA analysis can take a few days to complete and American crime labs are infamously overworked and backlogged). Unfortunately, jurors are frequently unaware of the time difference; getting evidence beyond a reasonable doubt by the ''CSI'' measure can conflict with giving the defendant a fair and ''speedy'' trial. And heaven help the prosecutor if the jury wants evidence of a kind that doesn't exist yet! At least one of the [=CSIs=] has had security camera footage rotated to see the back of something, for instance.

This one, when it happens, severely annoys defence attorneys.[[note]]This is a subset of a well-known problem, the tendency of jurors to place more weight on the testimony of police officers and other representatives of the authorities.[[/note]] This happens even though the science behind forensics is constantly evolving, and many labs are using methods no longer considered certain.

One notorious case down in Texas involved a man who was convicted on the basis of his lip prints -- a method of identification that hasn't been widely considered reliable for decades. Even worse, a man in Oklahoma spent almost two decades on ''death row'' for a crime that it was later proved he didn't commit. The primary evidence against him, aside from blatantly specious interrogation tactics? The shape of his hair follicles, a mode of identification that was proven useless in 1885, over a century before the murder took place.

Another notorious case in Texas has been the actual execution of a man accused of setting a house fire which killed his children. This one is very touchy for people on both sides of the issue of the death penalty for obvious reasons, but one fact which is beyond dispute (amongst experts not directly involved in the prosecution) is that the investigator used apparently clear signs of arson that research since the original trial has been demonstrated to not be ironclad proof of arson at all.

The arson-evidence controversy later was explored in the ''[[Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit Law & Order: SVU]]'' episode "Torch," portraying two fire scene investigators arriving at opposing conclusions about whether a man had set fire to his house, killing his family. The first investigator, near retirement, relied on outdated methods of interpretation of the evidence; the second investigator (with the help of a District Attorney played by Creator/SharonStone), recreated the scene and demonstrated that the other investigator's interpretation was flawed. The episode is discussed in [[http://www.texasobserver.org/contrarian/law--order-takes-on-arson this news article.]]

See ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'' for a similar phenomenon. Compare ThePerryMasonMethod, which inspired a similar problem in the 60's where some juries wouldn't convict unless the accused confessed in court.
Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} has a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect featured article on this topic.]] Of course, Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} itself [[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/03/wikipedia_police/ is a focus of the dangerously strong CSI effect.]]