CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Cool Change - S1-E2

Factual error: There are some majors problems with the "jumper's" crime scene. The girlfriend bashes the boyfriend on the back of his head. He bleeds out all over the balcony (she cleans up the blood with towels) but the body leaves absolutely no blood behind on the carpet (It's white\off white so blood would stain badly). She drags his body across the carpet and carpet fibers get stuck in his watchband by the adjustment knob. Dragging a body across the carpet would snag fibers on the opposite side. The CSI crew experiment and conclude the boyfriend was pushed. The blow to the head killed him instantly (coroner's report): therefore, the girlfriend would have dumped the body. Dumping a dead body over a rail would provide a different trajectory than pushing a live person and would not have matched their experiments. Finally, the boyfriend is fairly muscular and heavy. The girlfriend is petite. It would be an extremely difficult task to stand a lifeless body up at the balcony rail and flip him over. (If she could have lifted him up and over the rail, she should have been able to carry him to the balcony instead of dragging him.)

Rlvlk

Blood Drops - S1-E7

Factual error: The show falls into the Hollywood myth on polygraphs. Jesse is given a polygraph test after pleading guilty to the 4 murders. He answers all questions, except the last one, honestly. The 4 traces on the polygraph show no real movement on these questions. On the final question, Jesse lies and all 4 traces spike. If polygraphs actually did that, they would be admissible in court. But the reality is, it is the opinion of a highly trained operator that decides if there is a lie. The average person could not look at a polygraph results and point out a lie. There is no huge, visible spike. The producers could have replaced the 4 traces with a red\green light: Green is an honest answer and red a lie.

Rlvlk

I-15 Murders - S1-E11

Factual error: Grissom and Catherine are looking through a microscope and discussing a microscopic specimen (heart of frozen body). In reality they would not see anything as all microscope objectives are missing on this instrument (the microscope nose-piece is totally empty.). (00:21:00)

To Halve and to Hold - S1-E14

Factual error: When Gris and Teri are looking at the bones that were found in the desert and discussing an electric saw, Teri is talking about the medial condyle of the femur but the bone they are looking at is the tibia (seen by the flatness of the tibial plateau - the femoral condyles are much more rounded, and the triangular shape of the shaft of the bone). It makes no difference to the story but having gone to the lengths to get the scaphoid and cuneform in the right place, it would have been nice not to get two major bones, that look completely different, mixed up.

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Too Tough to Die - S1-E16

Character mistake: Seven minutes into the show, Sarah Sidle is about to do an internal sexual assault exam/kit on an unconscious victim in the hospital, Sarah picks up a metal speculum and says aloud to the victim (in a presumed moment of empathy), that she "never really liked this part of my yearly exam. These things are always freezing" referring to the speculum in her hands. She then brings a speculum to her mouth and begins to blow open-mouthed on it two times, forcing her hot breath on it to warm it. She then begins to insert it into the victim as the scene cuts away. This is pure stupidity, as no trained CSI would ever contaminate the tool like this. Sarah just added her own DNA to the speculum via her breath so any saliva or body fluids are now on the speculum what she is about to use on this patient, who is now also exposed to any STDs from Sarah.

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Trivia: Anthony Zuiker chose to set the series in Las Vegas because that city's crime lab is the second most active in the United States, behind the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.

Cubs Fan

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Suckers - S4-E13

Question: After finding out that Ty was committing insurance fraud, why did Grissom walk away instead of arresting him?

Answer: He doesn't have the authority to arrest him - when anyone is arrested in the show, a police officer does it. Also he tells Ty that he is going to be submitting his case findings to Ty's insurance company, who would no doubt contact the IRS, who then would have him arrested for fraud etc.

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