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March 10, 2008

The CSI effect: Coroner Dr. Roland Kohr shares his reasons for hating the popular TV show

By Arthur E. Foulkes

TERRE HAUTE — Vigo County Coroner Roland M. Kohr hates CSI – the popular TV programs about solving often bizarre murders.

Thanks to CSI, people have a completely unrealistic idea of what crime-scene investigations are really like, Kohr said.

Kohr, who is in his third term as Vigo County coroner, shared the “top 10 reasons I hate CSI” with an audience of about 50 people Monday at the Vigo County Public Library’s Southland branch.

“The public actually believes this stuff” was reason No. 3 Kohr said he hates CSI.

Thanks to CSI, jurors and the news media expect investigators to do sophisticated, time-consuming and expensive tests in more and more cases, Kohr said. This means jurors often demand sophisticated evidence, such as DNA analysis, before finding someone guilty, he noted.

Kohr mentioned one case in which a jury wanted fingerprint evidence despite having a suspect who confessed and was caught with stolen property.

“Juries think it should be as it is on TV,” Kohr said. “In trials, you spend a lot of time refuting the CSI effect,” he said.

Also, CSI makes real scientific testing look quick and easy, Kohr said. In real life, tests can take weeks or months to complete and are very expensive.

Even toxicology tests must be sent away and can take up to two weeks to return, Kohr said. On CSI they take just minutes, he said.

With a budget of just $125,000 per year, the Vigo County Coroner’s office is limited in what tests it can seek, he said. “If we did every test we could think of, we could do about five cases a year,” he said.

There were around 125 coroner’s cases in Vigo County last year, Kohr noted.

Other reasons Kohr said he hates CSI include an overuse of smart-sounding acronyms, the frequent use of flashlights when just turning on the lights would make things a lot easier and the fact that the fictional investigators seem to do everything themselves from testing blood stains to interrogating witnesses.

In real-life cases, several people and organizations are involved, Kohr noted. In one recent Sullivan County case, at least eight different organizations and individuals, including outside experts on blood splattering, were involved, he said.

Having different organizations involved in real-life cases also means “turf wars” can break out, Kohr noted. This is largely ignored by CSI, he said.

An additional problem with CSI, Kohr noted, is that the fictional bad guys often confess.

“It just doesn’t work that way,” Kohr said. “In real life there are attorneys” and highly paid expert witnesses who will say almost anything for a fee, he said.

In addition to his top ten list, Kohr showed the audience photographs of crime scenes and victims and diagrams of gunshot wounds, knife wounds and other injuries. He explained how wounds can tell investigators, for example, whether a gun was discharged at close range or not.

Kohr also told the audience that Indiana might do well to adopt a medical examiners’ system to replace county coroners, which exists in all of Indiana’s 92 counties. While Kohr is a certified forensic pathologist, he is the only coroner in the state with those credentials. The only constitutional qualification to serve as coroner in Indiana is that you must be at least age 18, Kohr noted.

Only about 5 percent of the cases Kohr sees are homicide cases, he noted. But on CSI, “virtually everything is a bizarre murder,” he said. “People think CSI is real. It’s not like it is on TV.”

Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.

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