Aruna Anbazhagan

Honors Seminar Report #1

Seminar Info:

Title: Portrayal of
Presenter: Robyn Diehl
Date: Thursday, September 16, 2010

According to Ms. Robyn Diehl, Richmond used to be the #2 city for the highest homicide rates in

1995. Although we have come a long way since then, Ms. Diels’s primary concern today is the effect of

TV shows on jury decisions and the overall justice system. With the popularity of TV shows such as CSI

and Law and Order, people have been taking away knowledge they feel they have gained regarding the

criminal justice system and specifically crime scene investigation and apply it to various aspects of their

lives. This result creates in its viewers a dubious understanding of the law, which is commonly known as

the CSI Effect. According to this CSI effect, jurors are expecting more from prosecutors when it comes to

physical evidence. Also jurors are able to understand and analyze more scientific evidence. As a result

criminals are becoming more scientifically sophisticated as well.

Although I might be addicted to a couple of these shows, I have often wondered myself of the

true realities that are so lightly portrayed on TV. I think people the most important thing that people

have to understand about the justice system is that every crime scene isn’t always perfect as they

always are on TV shows. Every crime scene may not have physical evidence that is able to be collected

or there may not always be enough of a collected sample. Sometimes there may even be a breakdown

of the sample which makes it useless, or there may not always be enough time to get the sample

processed before a court case is presented. For example, although the state if Virginia collects DNA on

all felons, it will not outsource due to control risks. Thus the result is a 6 to 8 month backlog. However,

CSI inspired jurors will expect to always be able to extract DNA or fingerprints from any evidence

collected. It has become such a common term that even if physical evidence alone was enough to
convict a felon, jurors today would definitely demand some sort of DNA test or fingerprinting in order to

rule out any reasonable doubt.

While Ms. Diels primary concern was the effect of justice system, it was also interesting to think

about the effect on family members or victims of crimes. After watching crime investigations solved in

less than 1 hour on TV day after day, it must be hard for the victims not to expect everything to play out

as they did on the show. Their emotional and personal frustration will inevitably be directed towards the

justice system, which is obviously not up to par with what they had imagined. In most cases, these

victims probably cannot understand why it takes so much time to run a simple DNA test. Slowly but

surely people will start losing trust with the justice system. Furthermore, as Ms. Diehl mentioned, not

only are we falsely educating the common people through these T V shows, we are also educating

criminals on all the different ways evidence can be manipulated in order to convict them. Although

some of these methods may not be realistic, criminals are still learning what they might not have known

otherwise. However, through this seminar I know I certainly learned a lot about my own misconceptions

about the justice system and I am interested to be more analytical the next time I watch my favorite TV

shows. Although entertainment is for entertainment only, we must not forget the subconscious and

sometimes even fully conscious effects of media on our perceptions of the real world.