A disappointed jury can be a dangerous thing. Just ask Jodi Hoos. Prosecuting a gang member in Peoria, Ill., for raping a teenager in a local park last year, Hoos told the jury, “You’ve all seen CSI. Well, this is your CSI moment. We have DNA.” Specifically, investigators had matched saliva on the victim’s breast to the defendant, who had denied touching her. The jury also had gripping testimony from the victim, an emergency-room nurse, and the responding officers. When the jury came back, however, the verdict was not guilty. Why? Unmoved by the DNA evidence, jurors felt police should have tested “debris” found in the victim to see if it matched soil from the park. “They said they knew from CSI that police could test for that sort of thing,” Hoos said. “We had his DNA. We had his denial. It’s ridiculous.”
Television’s diet of forensic fantasy “projects the image that all cases are solvable by highly technical science, and if you offer less than that, it is viewed as reasonable doubt,” says Hoos’s boss, Peoria State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons. “The burden it places on us is overwhelming.” Prosecutors have a name for the phenomenon: “the CSI effect.”
On the other side of the coin, there are prosecutors who use junk science from quacks who claim to be using forensics, such as Sandra Anderson, who regularly faked evidence for her “forensic dog” business. (Kit R. Roane and Dan Morrison, US News & World Report, Apr. 25) (via Volokh and PrawfsBlawg).
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