Line #24 Main/MistakenForEvidence


1	You've apprehended a suspect. You have a video of him carrying a large plastic bag filled with a suspicious-looking white powder. This must be the easiest OpenAndShutCase you've seen all year. In fact, the bag of powder has just come back from the lab identified as... cake mix?
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3	This is a common way to throw a plot twist into a ForensicDrama or PoliceProcedural - a crucial piece of evidence has been identified as some object, looks like said object, and everybody has been assuming it's that object. Then it suddenly turns out to be something completely different, which completely blows the whole case apart.
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5	It may also be used for comedy, when the true identity of the piece of evidence is absurd and/or ironic.
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7	Similar to the RedHerring, only this is caused by a mistake on the part of the investigators, as opposed to deliberate misdirection by suspects or witnesses.
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9	Sometimes overlaps with ABloodyMess, for which TheKetchupTest might be used for TheReveal. If the object in question is a powder or liquid, the FingertipDrugAnalysis may be used instead. More tragic examples of this trope involving imitation weapons may fit better under ShootHimHeHasAWallet.
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11	!Examples:
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14	[[folder:Comedy]]
15	* One Creator/PeterKay skit related his CrazyPrepared dad's trouble carrying a small plastic bag of Coffeemate, a milk substitute that comes in the form of a white powder, through foreign customs.
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18	[[folder:Fanwork]]
19	* In ''Fanfic/LiesWeTellOurselves'', Alya believes that Lila is telling the truth about being Ladybug's best friend because she gives key details about the battle on [[Recap/MiraculousLadybugS02E24CatalystHeroesDayPart1 Heroes']] [[Recap/MiraculousLadybugS02E25MayuraHeroesDayPart2 Day]] that she should not have known unless either she was there (Alya having no idea that Lila was willingly akumatized as Volpina at the time and thus remembered the event) or if Lila actually ''was'' Ladybug's friend and the latter told her.
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22	[[folder:Film]]
23	* Subverted in ''Film/StarskyAndHutch''. One of the plot points is cocaine that drug dogs can't detect; when the title characters bring it in, they're told they've found powdered sugar. It's not.
24	* Most (if not all) of the drama in ''Film/MyCousinVinny'' happens because the two accused teens [[OneDialogueTwoConversations mistakes the police arresting them as suspects in a murder for them being arrested for shoplifting from the same store]] and when the charges are finally mentioned, one of them repeatedly asks "I shot the clerk?" and the cops mistake it for a confession.
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27	[[folder:Literature]]
28	* In ''Literature/{{Wilt}}'', after Henry Wilt is accused of murdering his wife, the police search his house and find a lot of what looks like damning evidence, including a cleaver he had used to open a can of red lead.
29	* In the Literature/{{Discworld}} novel ''Literature/FeetOfClay'' a group of "respectable citizens" discover Vimes drunk and unconscious at his desk with a bag of suspicious white power in his drawer... and the Patrician has been recently poisoned with arsenic. Vimes wakes up and quickly eats the evidence. [[spoiler:It was just sugar, he hid the actual arsenic that had been planted in his desk to frame him and then faked being drunk.]]
30	* In ''Literature/{{Dunk}}'', In chapter 34, while the police are searching Chad's house after he was framed for supplying drugs, they find money he was making while working and mistake it for drug money. His name is cleared by his tenant, luckily.
31	* In Creator/ArthurConanDoyle's ''Literature/AStudyInScarlet'', victims are found surrounded by splashes of blood, including a word written in blood on the wall. Like the CSI example below, it's actually a murderer with a nosebleed. That is, there IS evidence present that helps catch the killer - but the blood isn't it.
32	* In ''The Literature/TeenageWorrier's Panick Diary'', Letty discovers that her boyfriend Basil is actually a criminal who burgled her best friend's house. She then remembers that he left a suitcase at her house. When she opens it, it contains what she thinks is rifles, along with a bag of mysterious white powder. When she finally calls the police a week later (because she had flu and was too sick to do anything about it) they tell her she will not be charged because the "guns" and "drugs" were actually golf clubs and soap powder.
33	* In the ''Literature/FernHollow'' short story "The Tortoise Fair", the lead wagon of the titular fair caravan races out of the village like a bat out of hell. Later on, it's discovered that two kids are missing, convincing PC Hoppit (the local constable) the tortoises took the two missing kids with them. [[RightForTheWrongReasons The kids are indeed in the caravan, but not for the reasons PC Hoppit thinks]]: [[RunningAwayToTheCircus they are stowaways, not kidnap victims.]] The "evidence" of the racing horse was the result of the horse being spooked by a train whistle.
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36	[[folder:Live Action TV]]
37	* One episode of ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' had the team investigating what they believed was a murder caught on video. Halfway in, Abby discovers that the knife that was supposedly used as the murder weapon is a prop knife that drips stage blood.
38	** She demonstrated the knife was fake by using it on ''herself''. This freaked out everyone that was watching.
39	* One episode of ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'' had Drew being investigated on suspicion of being a junkie. The white powder on Drew's coffee table is revealed to be powdered sugar from an extraordinary quantity of donuts, and one police officer found a professional-grade scale thinking it was being used to make meth, when Drew was trying to prove that Quarter Pounders weigh less than a quarter pound in order to file a lawsuit.
40	** Also, a drug-sniffing dog points to his desk at work, prompting Drew to open the drawer, which contained ribs.
41	---> "When ribs are outlawed, only outlaws will have ribs!"
42	** Another episode has Mimi stopped by the police, and subsequently being arrested when they discover a plastic bag full of a weird colored powder on her. Turns out it's her ExcessiveEvilEyeshadow taken out of its native tin for some reason.
43	---> "It's like they've never seen a baggie full of eye shadow before."
44	* Once on ''Series/{{Matlock}}'', Matlock and Tyler (his private investigator) were investigating a person who had some strange powdery substance delivered to his house every day. Tyler was working undercover as a chauffeur. They met late at night in a dark alleyway for Ben to get a sample for testing. Then the cops came and busted Matlock, since it was a known drug trafficking hangout. Matlock protested his innocence but was arrested. The cops tested the powder - it was a diet formula.
45	* A ''Series/{{CSI}}'' episode started with a room with walled covered in spattered blood. Later it was found that the blood had come from a man with a nosebleed, deliberately messing up the walls.
46	* In the Polish series ''Zmiennicy'', a drug sniffing dog at an airport get excited about a traveller's bag and the border security rip through his possessions searching for the drugs. Turns out the traveller was bringing in a fair bit of sausage in his baggage and the dog has been badly trained and reacts the same way to the smell of meat as he does to the smell of drugs. This presents a serious problem for the border guards since at the time most Polish travellers could be assumed to be bringing in some sort of meat products in their baggage.
47	* In the ''Series/RaisingTheBar'' episode "Is There a Doctor in the House", Kellerman's client is arrested after the police find a large amount of white powder in her car. It's laundry detergent, as she was on her way to the laundromat. The cop who arrested her is humiliated and fraudulently charges her with selling a "beat bag".
48	* In ''Series/TheGoodWife'' one of Alicia's clients pulls the cake mix ruse. His motive was to root out which of his lawyers was informing on him. The time frame points to Alicia, but she isn't the snitch (at the time, her phone was tapped by the NSA, which was passing information to the DEA).
49	* ''Series/ChicagoPD'': Played with in one episode where bloodstained clothing turns up during a search of an apartment belonging to a person of interest in a murder investigation, which is a false alarm but still ends up being an important lead. The lab identifies it as animal blood, mostly from pigs and cows, which the team correctly guess to mean that their person of interest probably worked at a nearby meat-packing plant.
50	* ''Series/TheWire'': After weeks of not hearing anything incriminating in their wiretap on Cheese, the detail catches a phone call of him almost in tear about having had to shoot "Dawg". After he is picked up and the detail almost have a victory celebration outside his interrigation room as he starts talking, Bunk and Freamon exit the room and reveal to them what had actually hapened. "Dawg" was Chees's pet fighting dog that lost a match and was injured necessitating Cheese to very literally ShootTheDog. What the unit doesn't know, that the incident did lead to Cheese and his associates killing people on the street, but they blew their wiretap and line of questioning dead by bringing Cheese in too soon and for the wrong reason.
51	* ''Series/ManhuntUnabomber'': the FBI is aware that many agents get bogged down on chasing phantom leads, referring to the "stamp guy" who is convinced he can track Unabomber down based on the stamps he used, and the team initially thinking a guy they arrested had to be him, because of his PURE WOOD KnuckleTattoos.
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54	%%[[folder:Visual Novels]]
55	%%* This tends to happen a lot in the ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' series, [[InvertedTrope mostly in the inverse direction]], but there are some normal moments too.
56	%%[[/folder]]
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58	[[folder:Real Life]]
59	* Possibly an urban myth: Three 7th-grade students at a Chicago public school were once arrested and brought to the police station for selling bags of a powder, which they continually insisted was just Kool-Aid. After spending 3 months trying to press charges, the prosecutors finally agreed to test the powder - and it turned out to be grape Kool-Aid mix. Due to the dangers involved in on-the-spot manual analysis of suspicious white powders (read: [[FingertipDrugAnalysis sampling or sniffing]]) an arrest will usually be made on the grounds of suspicious behavior or prior suspicion and the arrested will be detained until the powder can be tested - whether in the lab or using special equipment or dogs.
60	** In recent years, some police departments are issuing field-testing kits so that suspicious substances can be identified without having to return to the station.
61	* Played straight in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks 2002 Beltway sniper attacks.]] The snipers targeted people just off of interstates and major highways, to ensure they could get away quickly. Because of the high volume of commercial traffic that used those highways, many eyewitnesses at the shootings reported seeing a "white van or box truck speeding away." The police and FBI ran with this theory, and [[CassandraTruth ignored a report at one of the first shootings]] about an older blue Chevrolet Caprice. Eventually, other evidence was revealed tying the Caprice to the snipers, at which point the investigators realized that [[PoliceAreUseless it had been found at multiple checkpoints after each shooting]].
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Context Main / MistakenForEvidence