When all the reporters started calling last May, EMU criminology professor Gregg Barak was not surprised. A media specialist – he invented the term “newsmaking criminology” – he knew the surest way to get as much public attention as, say, a popular crime show, is to publish a survey about a popular crime show.

That is exactly what Barak and two of his colleagues in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology did. The survey centered on the so-called “CSI effect” on juries. Assistant professor and criminologist Young Kim and Washtenaw Circuit Judge Donald Shelton, who teaches several courses at EMU, joined Barak in designing and conducting the survey. For the record, Barak and the others weren’t after headlines, but they knew they were inevitable.

Barak, nationally recognized in his field, said it was the name “CSI” that automatically drew attention. “If we were doing a study that wasn’t about the CSI effect, you and I probably wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said. “‘CSI’ is the most popular show and phenomena of this decade. Everybody is conscious of it. It’s transformed how people think about the study of crime and justice. It’s driven up numbers second only to Jodie Foster in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ in terms of people who want to become criminologists. I mean, it’s naïve, but that’s neither here nor there.”

Adding to that combustive element was the involvement of a bona fide circuit court judge and the first-ever empirical measure of this so-called CSI effect. Previous measurements were little more than assumptions and anecdotes. The survey found no such effect – jurors were essentially found “Not guilty” of excessive TV-based bias – but it yielded other interesting information. It also was quite an experience for Barak, Kim and Shelton – none of whom, for the record, really watch the show.

It all began with Shelton. “Prosecutors and judges have been making anecdotal complaints that jurors have wrongfully acquitted defendants when the prosecution did not present the types of forensic evidence that is portrayed on ‘CSI’ and similar TV programs,” Shelton said. “These complaints received a lot of play in the media, which dubbed it the ‘CSI effect.’ Until this study, there was no empirical evidence to support or debunk these anecdotes.”

Shelton, who had seen enough in his own courtroom to pique his interest, wanted to obtain that evidence. He approached Barak, and the two had a lively debate over the validity of the CSI effect hypothesis. Because neither manipulates data, they invited Kim into the project.

“So the three of us played around with it,” Barak said. “But we were really working from scratch. We knew what we wanted to measure. We knew we would have to study the viewing habits of jurors and would have to compare and contrast … who watched these programs and those that didn’t.” Then the survey would examine how those habits would affect their expectations as jurors in various criminal trial scenarios.

Getting to that information required the right questions, which, Kim said, “took half of our time.” The survey was ready within about three months and administered in the summer of 2006. The questionnaire itself gives some idea of the TV effect being measured. The first question asks respondents how often they watch one of no fewer than 33 crime-based TV shows. The question listed shows ranging from “60 Minutes,” “Conviction” and “Trace Evidence” to the Discovery Channel’s “The New Detectives.”

The other segments of the 36-question survey asked respondents who qualified via their TV habits about their perceived accuracy of the shows; what types of evidence they would expect to see in various criminal cases, such as murder, criminal sexual conduct and theft; and how likely they would be to find defendants guilty given the presence of various kinds of evidence, such as scientific, circumstantial or DNA.

Shelton administered the survey to 1,027 actual jurors. Then the tabulated results were sent to Kim for statistical analysis. He had expected the results to debunk the myth, and they did. He had hoped “that nothing should influence the final verdict. I was not surprised” at the results, he said. But the survey did reveal that cultural factors – the presence of ever more sophisticated technology – did have some influence.

As Barak explained it: “It showed that jurors were sharper than we gave them credit for and, moreover, we could also conclude that those who watched these programs had a better appreciation for different kinds of evidence than people who didn’t watch the programs. So they were actually a more savvy juror than those who didn’t. So we thought they were getting seduced by these programs and they were raising the bar. No, they weren’t being seduced. In fact, they had a better appreciation for the nuances between the different types of evidence than non-watchers.

“None of this was ‘statistically significant,’ as one would say, but we saw that relationship,” Barak added. “And we ended up concluding that what’s going on is a technological effect. We’re all expecting technology to come in and tell us whether we did it or didn’t. What’s a DNA test if not to say: ‘Guilty’ or ‘Innocent.’”

Shelton calls it “heightened expectations” or a “broader tech effect” on jurors. He also said he was “not surprised by the results, because I did suspect that blaming television or the other media was too simplistic an explanation for jury conduct.” While those in the legal profession were not surprised by the “heightened expectations” findings, they were “very surprised by the lack of connection to ‘CSI’ or other programs,” Shelton added.

Barak maintains that the burden is now back on prosecutors and defense attorneys, who must keep in mind their more sophisticated jurors when preparing cases. Results of the survey appeared in the “Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law” before appearing just about everywhere else. Shelton has presented the results at several national conferences.
Meanwhile, Kim wants to dig deeper into the data. He believes, for example, that the CSI effect may exist in well-educated, higher-income women.