In LA, the actor Robert Blake took his wife to dinner, but it didn’t end happily.
He was her tenth husband, she always married rich, older men, for money.
At the same time, she was having an affair with Marlon Brando’s son and she’d become pregnant.
She was shot dead in the car, Blake was arrested for murder, it seemed like an open-and-shut case.
Blake’s defence was that he had left his gun in the restaurant and when he went back to get it, a stranger must have come along and shot his wife.
The police had two witnesses who Blake had previously offered money to kill his wife: a stuntman called Gary McClarty, and another called Ronald Hambleton.
But members of the jury ignored them and kept requesting more forensic evidence.
“Had they checked the ballistics on the bullet?”
“Had they found any DNA anywhere, if not why not?”
They kept asking for irrelevant technical evidence and eventually found Blake innocent.
Attorney Steve Cooley called the jury “incredibly stupid”.
A year later in civil court, on the same evidence, Blake was found guilty of her wrongful death and fined $30 million. He appealed, but the verdict was upheld, proving he was guilty.
So what happened to the first jury, why did they get it so wrong?
It’s an example of what’s become known as “the CSI Effect”.
This is now a serious problem for the American system of jury trials.
CSI is short for “Crime Scene Investigation” a police procedural TV series, each week a murder is solved using state-of-the-art forensic techniques.
It quickly became the most watched show in the world with a weekly audience of 63 million.
It created spinoff series such as CSI New York, CSI Miami, and CSI Cyber.
Other shows copied it: NCIS, Criminal Minds, Law & Order, each with its own spinoffs.
Soon there was a glut of TV shows with murders solved by the same formula: 1) corpse discovered, 2) CSI investigates, 3) CSI interrogates, 4) CSI apprehends, 5) suspect confesses.
Every case is solved by hi-tech forensic evidence and, because it’s a TV show, it’s solved in 60 minutes: fingerprints, DNA, ballistics, appear in an instant on computer screens.
In real life, much of that isn’t possible and even if it were it would take weeks.
But the CSI Effect overrides common-sense, making it much harder to get a conviction without showing juries what they’ve learned to expect from TV shows.
444 prosecutors were interviewed, they said 56% of juries were influenced by the CSI Effect and they said 81% of judges were.
Which of course meant lawyers on both sides began to game the system: running many pointless forensic tests to make their case look impressive.
The CSI Effect is now a fact of life, it isn’t going away and it’s similar to what we do.
A belief in data, in technology, in whatever the latest fashion is.
Nothing wrong with all those things of course.
Relevant information is always helpful in making decisions.
But the key word is ‘relevant’.
More information, more technology, isn’t always better, it can be confusing.
Because it appears sophisticated it can cloud issues we’re supposed to be concentrating on.
The technology impresses us, even if it isn’t relevant.
That’s why, in the end, it needs to be someone with a brain who makes the final decision on what is and isn’t relevant.
When I would ask Mike Greenlees to make a choice between alternatives, he’d usually reply: “As well as, not instead of”.
Meaning one side doesn’t nullify the other, both are valid and we must choose.
Or to put it another way: technology as well as using our brain, not instead of using our brain.
The Im not really dead effect. Dave, I’m still smiling in the afterglow of your previous post …was such a good read/ re read it’s a tough act to follow.
There is much more than the CSI effect happening here. Americans live in a country where jurors have ZERO assurance that the prosecution has not suppressed exculpatory evidence. There are also countless cases of prosecutors literally buying witnesses to perjure themselves or relying on junk science (hair analysis, discredited theories about burn patterns in arson cases, etc.).
I only vaguely remembered this case so I read Wikipedia’s account of the crime and the criminal and civil trials. It certainly sounds as if Blake was guilty of hiring someone to murder his wife but I wouldn’t convict anyone based on a Wikipedia page. I have served on two juries and ideally the jurors only know what the prosecutor and defense attorney tell them and then sort things out as best they can. The prosecutor and judge have enormous power and literally control almost all aspects of a trial. Innocence is not a guarantee that you will avoid a conviction.
I’d say it sounds like Blake got away with murder, but I don’t know enough about the crime to say that with any certainty. But I do know with certainty that defense attorneys are paid to lie and deceive, and that only a fool would trust an American prosecutor (who are politicians and usually intent on seeking higher office) absent compelling evidence. It’s also prudent to be skeptical of the judge. Jurors are charged with deciding a case based on the facts alone and just before they make that decision, the judge instructs them to ignore the arguments and to focus on the facts.
The CSI argument is usually just sour grapes from ineffective prosecutors. If this case had been well presented, Blake probably would have been convicted. And if it truly was a case of twelve very stupid jurors, then why did the prosecutor let them get through the voir dire process? Even if you’re right about Blake being guilty, it doesn’t mean the jury deserves all the blame.
Fortescue’s De Laudibus Legum Angliae states that “one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.” [Wikipedia]
thank you
for the wonderfully refreshing brain snacks as always
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