CSI effect

Abstract: Many prosecutors, judges and journalists have claimed that watching television shows like CSI have caused jurors to wrongfully acquit guilty defendants when no scientific evidence is presented. This is the first empirical study designed to investigate whether the CSI effect exists. This survey of 1027 persons called for jury duty in a State court looked at jurors' television viewing habits, their expectations that the prosecutor would produce scientific evidence, and whether they would demand scientific evidence as a condition of a guilty verdict. While the study did find significant expectations and demands for scientific evidence, there was little or no indication of a link between those preconceptions and watching particular television shows. The authors suggest that to the extent that jurors have significant expectations and demands for scientific evidence, it may have more to do with a broader tech effect in our popular culture rather than any particular CSI effect. At the same time, this article contends that any such increased expectations and demands are legitimate and constitutionally based reflections in jurors of changes in our popular culture, and that the criminal justice system must adapt to accommodate jurors' expectations and demands for scientific evidence.

Abstract: Beginning in 2002, popular media disseminated serious concerns that the integrity of the criminal trial was being compromised by the effects of television drama. Specifically, it was widely alleged that the popular CSI franchise, one of the most watched programs on television, was affecting jury deliberations and outcomes. It was claimed that jurors confused the idealized portrayal of the capabilities of forensic science on television with the actual capabilities of forensic science in the contemporary criminal justice system. Accordingly, jurors suffered from inflated expectations concerning the occurrence and probative value of forensic evidence. When forensic evidence failed to reach these expectations, it was suggested, juries acquitted. In short, it was argued that, in circumstantial evidence cases in which juries would have convicted before the advent of the CSI franchise, juries were now acquitting. As we have argued elsewhere, such charges, if true, would constitute a serious challenge to law's fundamental faith in the jury and thus raise serious questions about the integrity of the criminal justice system itself. However, the media perpetuated these claims in the absence of any convincing evidence that there was any such effect. Thus far, social science studies intended to detect the CSI effect have found little evidence of it. Unlike other studies that seek to test the CSI effect by thorough juror surveys and simulations, our approach has been to analyze actual acquittal rates in criminal trials. In an earlier analysis of federal trial data, we found no change in acquittal rates correlated with the advent of CSI. Although this finding does not itself disprove the CSI effect, it does suggest that the media claims that there is such an effect were premature. In the first part of this paper, we present additional data derived from state criminal trials that finds only equivocal evidence of a significant change in acquittal rates in response to CSI. We then present a content analysis of media claims about the CSI effect. This analysis shows that, contrary to the social science evidence, a consumer of popular media would have the impression that CSI is causing wrongful acquittals in our criminal justice system. In the final part of this paper, we draw parallels between the media storm concerning the CSI effect and another episode in which media claims about a severe social problem in the legal system were widely disseminated despite the absence of any convincing evidence that the problem was in fact occurring. The episode was the widespread concern about a supposed litigation explosion or hyperlexis during the 1970s and 80s. Echoing the legal scholarship concerning the litigation explosion, we explore the underlying anxieties that may generate media claims about social problems in the legal system.

Abstract: Since it first aired in 2000, CSI has consistently been among the top-rated television programs in the United States. In this article, we analyze CSI's debut season and also include observations about the program today as well as its two spin-offs: CSI: NY and CSI: Miami. We are interested in the cultural meanings conveyed in this very popular forensic crime drama, especially in terms of the moral authority of the police and of science. We consider how CSI uses the conventions of the crime genre to assert the police as a moral authority. We also demonstrate how CSI portrays a sense of forensic realism, and, in so doing, asserts the veracity of science. We conclude with a discussion of what these meanings suggest about the legitimacy of policing and of science. Do the CSI shows decrease crime because the potential criminal has an increased fear of being caught and convicted?