Yet Another Article About the CSI Effect

An excel­lent arti­cle reit­er­at­ing the effects TV shows like CSI are hav­ing on crime lab case­loads, juror opin­ions, as well as new defense attor­ney tactics.

Original arti­cle here.

Prime time pushes trend in crime foren­sics
By Josh Mitchell • Staff Writer

Waynesville defense attor­ney Don Patten has noticed an inter­est­ing trend among jurors in recent years.

They are hun­gry for hard and fast evi­dence like hair sam­ples, DNA, blood traces and firearm analy­sis — tid­bits most likely picked up from TV shows like “CSI” and “Cold Case.”

“Nowadays they’re (juries) think­ing this is ‘CSI’ world and local police and law enforce­ment are able to do extremely com­plex foren­sic exams,” Patten said. “In real­ity it is a extremely time con­sum­ing and tedious process.”

Patten admits that he plays on the jury’s naïve belief that things are like they are on TV by demand­ing such evi­dence from the prosecution.

“Of course we play off it,” Patten said.

However, he does not feel it is unreasonable.

“All I’m try­ing to do is cre­ate rea­son­able doubt. In every crim­i­nal case the state has the bur­den to prove beyond a rea­son­able doubt,” Patten said.

The sci­en­tific side of crime scene analy­sis and the field of foren­sic anthro­pol­ogy is rapidly grow­ing. Patten recalls when he became a defense attor­ney 25 years ago and there was no such thing as DNA analysis.

“Now it’s very com­mon,” he said. “It’s used every day in pater­nity cases.”

“Back then we were get­ting into fiber analy­sis,” he said.

Forensics has improved the field of crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, he said.

“It adds another level of cer­tainty one way or another,” Patten said. “Depending on what it is, it can be com­pletely dam­ag­ing or exonerating.”

Macon County Sheriff Robert Holland has seen a big change in foren­sics since enter­ing law enforce­ment in 1991. He said it has helped him solve many crimes.

Forensics tech­nol­ogy has not reached the point of how it is por­trayed on TV, Holland said.

“While ‘CSI’ is a good show, it causes law enforce­ment night­mares,” he said.

He laughed that shows like “CSI” show some­one putting a drop of blood in a machine that then pro­duces a sculp­ture of the person’s face.

But Holland often sends foren­sic evi­dence such as blood left at mur­der scenes and DNA from rape sus­pects to the state Crime Lab in Raleigh and Asheville for pro­cess­ing. Holland said all of his inves­ti­ga­tors are trained in col­lect­ing foren­sic evi­dence, but the State Bureau of Investigation is also called in to assist in inves­ti­ga­tions, includ­ing all homi­cides. With foren­sic tech­nol­ogy always improv­ing, Holland said his detec­tives are con­tin­u­ally in training.

The best evi­dence to have

The “CSI” syn­drome among jurors has been an issue for District Attorney Mike Bonfoey of Waynesville.

“Juries expect every­thing to be solved,” Bonfoey said.

But when inves­ti­ga­tors can get their hands on it, foren­sic evi­dence can be the lynch pin needed to seal a case. When DNA evi­dence is col­lected at the scene of sex­ual assault cases, for exam­ple, it can be com­pared against known sus­pects mak­ing for a cut-and-dry case if there’s a match.

In other cases, gun­shot residue tests can be done on sus­pects to deter­mine if they recently fired a gun, Bonfoey said.

Particles or pow­der from the gun­shot might still be on suspect’s hand, he said. Gases from the gun’s cham­ber and bar­rel may also be on the suspect.

Fingerprints, unlike on TV, are often not very help­ful, Bonfoey said.

Blood splat­ters on the wall can be help­ful in deter­min­ing what the vic­tim was doing when he was shot. For instance, was the per­son killed the ini­tial aggres­sor, defend­ing him­self, or kneeled on the ground exe­cu­tion style.

This type of evi­dence is help­ful when defen­dants say they were defend­ing themselves.

“Forensics fill in the puz­zle,” Bonfoey said.

Ballistics are also help­ful iden­ti­fy­ing the type of gun used in a crime. Bonfoey explained when a bul­let is fired from a rifle or hand­gun it picks up mark­ings unique to cer­tain guns.

Unique pin mark­ings are also left on fired shot­gun shells.

Paint left behind from hit-and-run acci­dents, plas­ter casts of tire tracks and shoe prints, and hair sam­ples are other forms of foren­sic evi­dence Bonfoey said he uses.

Crime lab hold-up

In some cases foren­sic evi­dence is a must, Patten said.

“In sex cases and mur­der cases I’m going to be look­ing for DNA and hair because the penal­ties are so severe that it’s not unrea­son­able,” he said.

Patten said he thinks the state Crime Lab is slow in turn­ing around evidence.

“Right now if a cop finds what is believed to be pot and sends it to the state lab, it could be six months before the lab gets it ana­lyzed and returned to local law enforce­ment,” Patten said. “If it’s DNA or some­thing more com­pli­cated it may be eight to 10 months.”

He sug­gests the state hire more chemists and foren­sics experts to work in the Crime Lab.

“When you’re not able to get a lab result for six months the client is in limbo with a cloud over his head,” Patten said.

Holland agrees get­ting evi­dence returned from the state Crime Lab often takes a long time, Holland said. Sometimes it takes sev­eral weeks to a year, he said.

Evidence he sends runs the gamut includ­ing stom­ach mat­ter, bul­lets and rape kits.

Drugs have to be sent to the Crime Lab to prove they are actu­ally drugs. A delay in get­ting evi­dence back from the lab means it takes longer to get a case through the court system.

“It delays the proof of inno­cence or guilt of a per­son,” Holland said.

However, Holland said the court sys­tem is back­logged any­way, and get­ting evi­dence turned around more quickly prob­a­bly wouldn’t make a difference.

Crime lab on overdrive

In response to the grow­ing demand for foren­sic evi­dence, the State Bureau of Investigation has ramped up the num­ber of DNA experts work­ing in its crime lab from five in 2001 to 42 now. DNA was used to catch more mur­der­ers, rapists and other crim­i­nals in the first six months of 2007 alone than in the first 10 years of the DNA pro­gram combined.

Bonfoey said he would like to get evi­dence from the state Crime Lab turned around faster. But he said he does not think there is a back­log in get­ting his evi­dence back.

“I’d like to see the state have more foren­sic ana­lysts of var­i­ous types to see this move quicker,” he said.

Public Information Officer for the state Department of Justice Noelle Talley said there is no back­log at the state Crime Lab.

She couldn’t give an aver­age turn­around on evi­dence, say­ing each case is different.

She said a state law passed in 2004 that requires all con­victed felons to pro­vide a DNA sam­ple has helped the state clear cases. The Crime Lab has dra­mat­i­cally improved DNA evi­dence turn-around time and cleared all untested rape kits from local law enforce­ment shelves, she said

The data­base now has more than 150,000 DNA sam­ples com­pared to about 18,700 in 2000.

The data­base had 342 hits in 2007 com­pared to just 64 in 2004 — up sub­stan­tially from 1995 when there was one hit.