The Classic: CSI Miami
UPON REQUEST!
Shout out to my friend Paul Latt, who said this classic show is a "must watch." So I decided it was perfect for my final summer installment...
...and then I realized there are zero lawyers in the first few episodes. One showed up in episode 4, protested during a suspect interview, and then left. But it was still a fun watch, and the investigative details will pop up in my fall evidence class!
I started off with season 1, episode 1, and one thing stood out immediately - the Caruso one-liners. Truly the stuff of courtroom dreams.
"Any doubts, bag it and tag it." (About every bit of evidence at a crime scene, very catchy)
"He sure checked himself out." (Regarding a murderer who then committed suicide, following his self-checkout from a hospital)
"He's unconscious so he can't tell us anything." Caruso - "Are you sure abut that?" (*recovers some kind of evidence from the unconscious body*)
The CSI Miami team TRULY has it all: two bad ass investigators, a few lab techs, a ballistic expert, and a coroner. I'm sorry to report this is 100% not realistic.
First of all, the detectives do the lab work and conduct interviews? Definitely not. There are also a suspicious lack of precautions in the lab. I think techs wear more than just a blue coat and a pair of gloves while examining evidence!
Second, coroners aren't "built-in" parts of a police unit. They're supposed to stay neutral and detached, and only report facts about their medical examinations to police forces. Of course, this isn't always the case (read this article for allegations of police misconduct with coroner reports). Also, I'm fairly certain that an autopsy takes hours, not several dramatic minutes…
Then you have the ballistics expert - aka, "the bullet girl." Ballistics is a type of forensic science which can identify the weapons and ammunition used in the commission of a crime. During manufacturing, specific ridges and indentations are created inside the barrel of a gun, which leaves matching patterns on a bullet fired from that barrel. Experts can compare the ridges to verify that a bullet came from a specific gun - kind of like comparing fingerprints. In some cases, the evidence left behind (gunshot residue, damage, trajectory angles, entrance and exit points, and distance from the target) can also paint a picture of how the crime occurred.
Unfortunately, ballistics evidence is far from perfect. Despite The Bullet Girl saying "ballistics is an exact science," many people think courts place too much confidence in those results. In a recent case called United States v. Green, the court ruled that a ballistics expert could testify that casings in a bullet were very similar to the gun, but could NOT testify that the bullet came from a specific gun "to the exclusion of all other guns in the world.”
Next - a quick DNA analysis? Literally non-existent. Laboratories are separate from standard police units, so investigators have to physically ship the evidence. It takes weeks, if not longer, to get results back. Also, I'm not an expert on labs, but I'm fairly sure they aren't as high-tech as the CSI: Miami digs. For instance, there's a scene where the team listens to a tape recording from the plane; they hit one button to cut out the pilots' voices, then hit another to ‘enhance’ the static underneath - and suddenly the passenger’s voices, FROM THE BACK OF THE PLANE, are perfectly clear.
Um, okay.
There's also a scene in the VERY first CSI Miami episode, where the team finds two sets of hand prints on an airplane door. To show the different prints, one set is colored in red and one in green...on the original door. Covering the original prints. If I'm a lawyer and bringing that door into court, I am NOT happy with that team. Paint would never be applied directly onto an actual piece of evidence because it would contaminate that evidence and probably render it unusable in court.
On that note, the CSI Miami team seems to recover DNA evidence at every single crime scene. In reality, investigators recover usable DNA evidence in a small fraction of criminal cases - and of those cases, only a small number can be linked to another crime and therefore, the perpetrator.
Finally, the most important bit of all. I have it on good faith that you aren't a REAL agent until you have Sunglasses of Justice that you whip around at every available opportunity. Not sure if that applies to lawyers too, but...I should probably invest. Just in case.