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The excitement of watching a beautiful well-dressed medical examiner or forensic examiner in stiletto heels hovering over a homicide victim is quite thrilling for television. However, in the reality solving homicides is not as one would see on their favorite police show. As mention previous, the intrigue with police shows on television make it difficult to found a jury that have not seen those type show.
Therefore, the court system has a problem obtaining a guilty verdict because jurors wrongfully acquit guilty defendants when no scientific evidence has been presented, as they have seen on television. As Donald Shelton states in “the CSI Effect: Does It Exist” this so-called effect was promptly dubbed the “CSI effect,” laying much of the blame on the popular television series and its progeny (Shelton, 2008, p.2)
Shelton further states that a juror on complain that the prosecution had not done a thorough job because “they didn't even dust the lawn for fingerprints.” “Another, prosecutor said that, “jurors expect us to have a DNA test for just about every case and the most advanced technology possible, and expect it to be as it is on television ” (Shelton, 2008, p.2)
Homicide investigations are more wearisome. The investigator work do not play out in reality as it does on CSI Miami, the investigation are often quite long and not solved in a matter of hours as seen on television. Furthermore, as Davies (2008) states investigators in large cities, do have the luxury to work on one case at a time, and for those in smaller jurisdictions, a case a week would be extraordinary (Davies, 2008, p. 246).
In the real world investigators has a challenging task to establish the quilt of an accused person guilt beyond all doubt. In...
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...es Report: A CHALLENGE TO FORENSIC SCIENCE. Criminal Justice, 24(4), 4-11. Retrieved October 17, 2011, from ProQuest Criminal Justice. (Document ID: 1954576801).
Inbau, F. (1999). Firearms identification--Ballistics. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 89(4), 1293-1314. Retrieved October 16, 2011, from Research Library. (Document ID: 51287719).
Layton, J. (2005). How Crime Scene Investigation Works. Retrieved from http://science.howstuffworks.com 13 October 2011.
Saferstein, R., (2011). Criminalistics: An Introduction to Forensic Science for Ashford University, Tenth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
Schiro. G. (2001). Collection and Preservation of Blood Evidence from Crime Scenes. http://www.crime-scene-investigator.net/blood.htm
Shelton, D. (2008). The CSI Effect: Does It Really Exist? Retrieved from http://www.nij.gov
Since the airing of the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and the other televised series that followed have led jurors to compare fiction with reality. The shows have changed the view on the real world of forensic science as the series have a world of forensic science of their own. For this paper the televised series titled Bones by forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs will be used as an example for comparison. In the series Bones Dr. Temperance Brenan arrives at the scene of the crime to examine the skeletal remains found in the scene of the crime equipped with one or more forensic kits. Upon momentarily examining the skeletal remains Dr. Brenan is able to determine the gender, ethnicity, and age. When this type of scenario is compared to nonfictional
Kassin, Saul, and Lawrence Wrightsman (Eds.). The Psychology of Evidence and Trial Procedure. Chapter 3. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985. Print.
Jurors have unrealistic ideas of evidence processing. ”Such programs give the impression that forensic laboratories are fully staffed with highly trained personnel, stocked with a full complement of state-of-the-art instrumentation and rolling in the resources to close every case in a timely fashion.” (Houck 85) Forensic laboratories face funding deficits, not enough suitably trained staff and the consistent advancement of technology. University of Maryland forensic scientist Thomas Mauriello estimates that about 40 percent of the forensic science shown on CSI does not exist. Carol Henderson, director of the National Clearinghouse for Science, Technology and the Law at Stetson University College of Law, told a publication of that institution that jurors are “sometimes disappointed if some of the new technologies that they think exist are not used.” (Houck 87) Investigators often have to explain to victims that it is not possible to collect a sample of...
Gardner, T. J., & Anderson, T. M. (2013). Criminal evidence: Principles and cases (8th ed.).
Lyman, D. Michael; Criminal Investigation, The Art and Science; 3rd edition, 2002 Prentice Hall. Pgs. 188-200.
In order to understand how to compile evidence for criminal cases, we must understand the most effective types of evidence. This topic is interesting because there are ample amounts of cases where defendants have gotten off because of the lack of forensic evidence. If we believe forensic evidence is so important and it affects our decisions, then maybe we need to be educated on the reality of forensic evidence. If we can be educated, then we may have a more successful justice system. If we have a more successful justice system than the public could gain more confidence that justice will be served. In order to do this, we must find what type of evidence is most effective, this can be done by examining different types of evidence.
In today’s time, modern Crime Scene Investigation has increased rapidly. From throughout the late 1900’s and in the early 2000’s (Taylor 1). For all of the evidence that they find, a solid foundation has formed over the thousands of years of Crime Scene
Forensic psychology is an area of psychology that has been rapidly gaining popularity in recent years. Entertainment media’s fascination with the intersection of crime and psychology has fueled the growing interest in the field. According to Jane Tyler Ward, PhD, forensic psychology can be defined as psychology that “emphasizes the application of research and experimentation in other areas of psychology to the legal arena.” Although forensic psychology is popular right now, it was not until 1962 that a court case set the precedent that properly trained psychologists could provide expert testimony (Page 20). Additionally, forensic psychology was not APA (American Psychological Association) certified until 2001 (Page 16). The field of forensic
In the following literature review, scholarly and peer-reviewed journals, articles from popular news media, and surveys have been synthesized to contribute to the conversation pertaining to forensics in pop culture in the courtroom and the overall criminal justice system. This conversation has become a growing topic of interest over just the past few years since these crime shows started appearing on the air. The rising popularity of this genre makes this research even more relevant to study to try to bring back justice in the courtroom.
Review, PubMed PMID: 19543886. Saferstein, R. (2011). Criminalistics: An introduction to forensic science (10th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Schmalleger, F. (2009), Prentice Hall, Publication. Criminal Justice Today: An introductory Text for the 21st century
In recent years, however, such programs as CSI that follows detectives at the Las Vegas Police Department Crime Scene Investigations Bureau as they solve puzzles and catch criminals. Perhaps one of the most well known shows with a forensic psychology theme, CSI has a large impact on viewers perceptions of forensic psychology. On one hand, the increased popularity of forensic psychology because of the show is good and more people are taking an interest in forensic psychology as a career. On the other hand, the forensic psychology that viewers see every week on television may not be exactly the same as forensic psychology in reality. Particularly programs such as CSI also overstate the ability of “hard” evidence (also known as forensic evidence), such as fingerprints and DNA, to provide evidence of definite innocence or guilt (Trask, 2007). They often disregard other components of the investigative process, such as police questioning, despite these being equally valid to establishing guilt (Nolan, 2006). This over-reliance on forensic evidence, due to the importance of forensic science being dramatized by television crime dramas, is also known as the CSI
Roesch, R., & Rogers, B. (2011). The cambridge handbook of forensic psychology. Canadian Psychology, 52(3), 242-242-243.
Gaensslen, R. E., Harris, H A., & Lee, H. (2008). Introduction to Forensic Science and Criminalistics. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. .
Forensic Science, recognized as Forensics, is the solicitation of science to law to understand evidences for crime investigation. Forensic scientists are investigators that collect evidences at the crime scene and analyse it uses technology to reveal scientific evidence in a range of fields. Physical evidence are included things that can be seen, whether with the naked eye or through the use of magnification or other analytical tools. Some of this evidence is categorized as impression evidence2.In this report I’ll determine the areas of forensic science that are relevant to particular investigation and setting out in what method the forensic science procedures I have recognized that would be useful for the particular crime scene.