CSI: FACT OR FICTION?

This afternoon I went to a program of the New York Times' Arts & Leisure Weekend entitled "Crime Scene Investigation." It was a panel discussion featuring former NYC sex crimes prosecutor turned novelist Linda Fairstein, renowned forensic scientist (an expert witness in the O.J. Simpson trial) Dr. Henry Lee, and the creator of the hit TV series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and its spinoffs, Anthony E. Zuiker. The program was described as an examination of "how TV crime solving matches up to real-life investigations."

First, I should say that I haven't watched many of the CSI TV shows, and the few I've seen I didn't particularly like. Even without having the specialized knowledge of the panelists, I knew the shows were far, far from real-life. Real police forensic specialists do not have any contact with suspects--that's the job of the detectives. They're certainly not going to be the ones slapping the cuffs on them.

I had also read a little article in TV Guide after the first show started, where they listed which of the forensic procedures shown on the show could actually be done. Some were accurate, but some were a big stretch--and a few were total fiction, according to the experts quoted. What I also read elsewhere is that no local police forensics lab has all of the fancy equipment shown on the show.

But, my wife likes CSI: Miami especially, and she had had a brief encounter with Linda Fairstein many years ago (she was on a jury in a trial Fairstein prosecuted before she moved to the Sex Crimes Division), and she wanted to go. So I went along, even knowing pretty much what was going to be said.

And they said it. That and a bit more. For instance, while this does vary from locality to locality, the people who gather the evidence at the crime scene generally are not the people processing it in the lab--that's a separate group of people. So on the shows they melded three different units, the detectives, the evidence gatherers, and the lab technicians, into one. And, as one would suspect, the labs don't come up with answers nearly as fast as on the show.

That kind of stuff I expected--it's entertainment, not a documentary, and they have to tell a story in 44 minutes and 15 seconds, as Zuiker explained. They try to keep it as accurate as possible, with experts on their staff, but that's not their highest priority.

What I didn't expect was a discussion of how the TV shows have affected real-life. There is now a huge number of people, the majority women, wanting to get into forensic science. Dr. Lee runs a school for them. But it goes way beyond making an arcane profession suddenly hip. Juries now have to be warned that real life is not like on CSI--they're not going to see the kind of evidence they've seen on TV. Dr. Lee also told us of a police detective who requested Dr. Lee to write to his Chief, because the Chief was demanding results from his CSI people like he saw on television.

It was an entertaining hour-and-a-quarter. They were all good, humorous speakers, though Dr. Lee's accent is still pretty thick despite all the years since he came to America. Clyde Haberman, the New York Times columnist who moderated, asked good questions. There was a Q&A for audience members at the end, and even most of those questions were pretty good.

But the best part of the whole thing was when Haberman allowed Fairstein and Lee a couple of minutes to wander off-topic and discuss the O.J. Simpson case. Dr. Lee had testified for the defense, and said the evidence could not establish Simpson's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Fairstein said that to the contrary, the evidence of past, escalating domestic abuse, coupled with the physical evidence, was enough, and that if the judge and prosecutors had done their jobs right Simpson would have been convicted.

It was Dr. Lee, though, who got the biggest laugh of the program when he said, "At the beginning of the trial, 80% of Caucasians thought O.J. was guilty, and 80% of African-Americans thought he was innocent, and 100% of the Chinese didn't give a shit."