They can't really be serious...can they?

[richlevy]

"Jurors now expect us to have a DNA test for just about every case," laments Oregon District Attorney Josh Marquis. "They expect us to have the most advanced technology possible, and they expect it to look like it does on television."

Of course, considering how many people the Innocence Project has freed with DNA evidence years or decades after conviction, holding out for DNA evidence before you sentence someone to death or life in prison might no be a bad minimum standard.

If I had a crystal ball and 50 million dollars, I could hire Robert Blake's lawyer for every innocent defendent. Barring that, I think that jurors wanting more evidence before convicting someone is not a bad thing, considering how little 'reasonable doubt' was applied to some of the convictions the Innocence Project overturned.

Yes, you are probably not going to have blood spatter and gun residue on a suspect two days later. This might mean that the suspect has had time to shower and dispose of the clothes worn during the crime, or it might mean that the person is innocent.

I want law and order as much as anyone, even Maggie. I also want justice, which can sometime be different. The fact is, unless the defendents are rich, they rely on public defenders, and the prosecutors, for all of their claims about funding, usually are better staffed and funded than the public defenders. So if they have to work at it a little harder to make sure that the cops picked the right guy, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

See preponderance of the evidence.

preponderance of the evidence is required in a civil case and is contrasted with "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is the more severe test of evidence required to convict in a criminal trial.

We have a weaker test in civil cases than in criminal cases for a reason. If a civil case is later found to be wrong, it's easier to give someone their money back than their life back.

While the ease with which the CSI television people are able to collect their evidence is probably not true to life, the methods of collection and types of evidence available are real. So if a jury wants to know why a defendent picked up 30 minutes after a gun crime doesn't have any gun residue, I am very happy for that, because probably many public defenders might not bring up the point, even though they should have.

I knew there were no WMDs... it was not hard, they never showed them.
It was all lies, smoke and mirrors. We knew he had them (past tense) because we were the ones who gave them to him, so him having them should have not been that big of a deal anyway.
http://mindprod.com/politics/iraqlies.html#LIES
We don't use DNA the way we should as it is, when a college in the Midwest used it to prove the innocence of men on death row they were told to stop and no college has been allowed to do so since. The government wants to murder innocent people.

I was turned down for jury duty because I had opinions and was well informed, they don't want people who read and have minds of their own.

[tw]

Scientific American of July 2006 adds data:

Several legal experts have argued, however, that the CSI effect may be illusory. The newspaper that quoted Atlantic City lawyer Levin also noted that Superior Court Judge Albert Garofolo said, "My initial reaction might have been 'Yes, there is a CSI effect." But I think this may be more of a suspicion than anything else. There's a feeling this could be real, but in truth I can't recall a situation where I've heard a jury say they were expecting more." ...

What appears to be the first study of the CSI effect was published in February by Kimberlianne Podlas, an attorney and assistant professor of media law and ethics at the Universtiry of North Carolina at Greensboro. Podlas concluded that the chances of, and reasoning for, acquittals were the same for frequent CSI viewers as for prospective jurors who did not watch the show - she saw no CSI effect. Several participants, however, said that a lack of forensic testing was an issue, despite the fact that physical evidence would not have resolved the hypothetical charges. Studies of real juries have been advocated, and at least five graduate students (three in the US and two in England) are preparing theses examining the effect.