CSI Fans...
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CSI:NY is a great show.. been watching it sinces it's premier ! The cast from CSI:NY are very italian based ! Which is good because NY is full of em anyway ! I find it much better then the original one ! The crimes are very different and there is one ep where they had to crack into the mob org !
Do give NCIS a try ! It's also another show like CSI's but more US naval based ! Good stuff ! -
US naval based? yeeks, dun tink it appeals to girls... definitely not me...Originally posted by ben1406:CSI:NY is a great show.. been watching it sinces it's premier ! The cast from CSI:NY are very italian based ! Which is good because NY is full of em anyway ! I find it much better then the original one ! The crimes are very different and there is one ep where they had to crack into the mob org !
Do give NCIS a try ! It's also another show like CSI's but more US naval based ! Good stuff !
but looking forward to CSI:NY, premiering on 5 Apr on AXN! -
There's also Missing, Without a Trace and Cold Case. And also, ER and Arrested Development. I wish they'd bring back Scrubs too... that was funny!Originally posted by sweetie05:ya, this show is kinda cheem but very very interesting and thought-provoking.
i never watched the first series with whatzisname (macdermot?) but this one with alan shaw caught my attention 2,3 weeks ago. so i juz got to catch it.
ch5 is getting more interesting -- Mon Desperate Housewives, Tue CSI and The Practice, Wed, American Idol 4 and Amazing Race... i can only go out late on Thu and Fri... which makes sense!
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i never watch Idol or Race...
anyhooo.. fridays are for going out
strangely, i never watched The Practice before either.. it was coz of late nights before the football and after CSI that i started watching (recently coz ch i died)
Shaw is a tortured soul... he got a murderer off whom he was convinced was innocent..Originally posted by sweetie05:ya, this show is kinda cheem but very very interesting and thought-provoking.
i never watched the first series with whatzisname (macdermot?) but this one with alan shaw caught my attention 2,3 weeks ago. so i juz got to catch it.
ch5 is getting more interesting -- Mon Desperate Housewives, Tue CSI and The Practice, Wed, American Idol 4 and Amazing Race... i can only go out late on Thu and Fri... which makes sense! -
well, just shows that he's good. Criminal lawyers help their guilty clients walk free.
He's got it right and well on top of his game. -
Actually, The Practice and CSI are shows where you get memorable one-liners and quotes pretty often. Really good scripts, I must say.
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no.. he was actually beside himself after that...
his trust was betrayed by his best friend... he thought all the evidence would have pointed to his friend's guilty verdict but he was convinced that the man was innocent... therefore he got the guy off..
he's good but like most standing on the outside, he has a code of personal ethics which will cause him to do what he can to get "an innocent man" off...
but with most standing on the outside, he will be taken advantage of...
notice how he would manipulate everything in order to help those he feels is innocent?
but all that will come at a cost to him.. he doesn't really care...
it's a code he lives by...
to have a friend like him, is to have someone who will walk to hell and back with you..Originally posted by ilovemyrolex:well, just shows that he's good. Criminal lawyers help their guilty clients walk free.
He's got it right and well on top of his game. -
finally get to see season 4.
no need wait for my sch lib.
somehow i feel grissom looks weird with that moustache. reminds me of a 50year old trying to look 40
he looks more intelligent in 3 -
Scrubs rocks !Originally posted by Rhonda:There's also Missing, Without a Trace and Cold Case. And also, ER and Arrested Development. I wish they'd bring back Scrubs too... that was funny! -
I don't think he feels betrayed by what's-his-name. I think he was blinded by his deep friendship that he did not consider it possible that his friend was guilty. Only when the case was over, he even considered for a moment that it is possible his childhood friend could be a killer...
He loves winning and he is driven by winning. I think that's the reason he persisted with the case with Eugene, Jimmy and Elanor. He just wants to win. It's seems like he constantly need to soothe his ego, probably compensating for some personal deficiency like the lack of morals... "If you think i'm wrong, you'll have to defeat me".
sorry for hijacking the thread, it's suppose to be about CSI...Originally posted by the Bear:no.. he was actually beside himself after that...
his trust was betrayed by his best friend... he thought all the evidence would have pointed to his friend's guilty verdict but he was convinced that the man was innocent... therefore he got the guy off..
he's good but like most standing on the outside, he has a code of personal ethics which will cause him to do what he can to get "an innocent man" off...
but with most standing on the outside, he will be taken advantage of...
notice how he would manipulate everything in order to help those he feels is innocent?
but all that will come at a cost to him.. he doesn't really care...
it's a code he lives by...
to have a friend like him, is to have someone who will walk to hell and back with you.. -
CSI fans who are interested in real-life Forensics might like to read this Chicago Tribune article.
Sadly, flaws in forensics reports have resulted in the death sentence for a few innocents.
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CSI: Las Vegas Season4 tmr night 10pm on Ch5!
Desperate Housewives tonight 10pm. Hope I am home by then. -
Need registration for the link. can you pls cut n paste here?Originally posted by Rhonda:CSI fans who are interested in real-life Forensics might like to read this Chicago Tribune article.
Sadly, flaws in forensics reports have resulted in the death sentence for a few innocents. -
That's odd... I didn't have to register previously to access the articles but now, they suddenly request it!Originally posted by ilovemyrolex:Need registration for the link. can you pls cut n paste here?
Well, I'll try to cnp excerpts here...
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FORENSICS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE (Part I)
Digitized prints can point finger at innocent
Handling, quality of image are risks
By Flynn McRoberts and Steve Mills
Tribune staff reporters
Published January 3, 2005
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. -- Deep inside a sprawling complex tucked in the hills of this Appalachian town, a room full of supercomputers attempts to sift America's guilty from its innocent.
This is where the FBI keeps its vast database of fingerprints, allowing examiners to conduct criminal checks from computer screens in less than 30 minutes--something that previously took them weeks as they rummaged through 2,100 file cabinets stuffed with inked print cards.
But the same digital technology that has allowed the FBI to speed such checks so dramatically over the last few years has created the risk of accusing people who are innocent, the Tribune has found.
Across the country, police departments and crime labs are submitting fingerprints for comparisons and for entry into databases, using digital images that may be missing crucial details or may have been manipulated without the FBI knowing it.
Not unlike a picture from a typical digital camera, a digital fingerprint provides less complete detail than a traditional photographic image. That matters little with pictures from the family vacation. But when the digital image is of a fingerprint, the lack of precision raises the specter of false identifications in criminal cases.
"There's a risk that not only would they exclude someone incorrectly--we have the potential to identify someone incorrectly," said David Grieve, a prominent fingerprint expert who is the latent prints training coordinator for the Illinois State Police crime lab system.
An FBI-sponsored group of fingerprint examiners was concerned enough about the quality of digital images that in 2001 it recommended doubling their resolution. Three years later, though, the vast majority of police agencies still use equipment with the lower resolution.
Equally troublesome, the most commonly used image-enhancement software, Adobe Photoshop, leaves no record of some of the changes police technicians can perform as they clean up fingerprint images to make them easier to compare.
This seemingly esoteric issue is crucial because it raises questions about a bulwark of the criminal justice system: chain of custody. If authorities cannot prove that a fingerprint is an accurate representation of the original and show exactly how it was handled, its validity can be questioned.
FBI officials recognize the resolution problem but say it leads to overlooking guilty people, not falsely accusing the innocent.
"The risk that we're hearing is that we miss people--because the resolution isn't enough--not that we're identifying people incorrectly," said Jerry Pender, deputy assistant director at the FBI's Clarksburg facility.
Potential for error rising
Such confidence is unwarranted, according to digital-imaging specialists and some leading fingerprint experts. And they say the potential for mistakes is growing inexorably as police departments around the nation switch from old inked cards to digitized computer images.
To do so, technicians scan an inked card into a computer, which converts it into a pattern of 0s and 1s that digitally represent the image, similar to how a fax machine works. And, like a fax machine, the process of digitizing the fingerprint loses considerable amounts of detail.
"It gives examiners the misleading impression that they're getting a better-quality image to examine," said Michael Cherry, an imaging expert who is on the evidentiary committee of the Association for Information and Image Management, a business technology trade group. "These images actually can eliminate fingerprint characteristics that might exclude a suspect."
Measuring the number of cases in which a digital image may have wrongly linked a suspect to a crime scene is difficult. The technology is so new that many defense attorneys do not know to ask if the fingerprint image entered into evidence has been digitized.
"I think it's a very real problem, but it's under the [radar] still," said Mary Defusco, director of training at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, a non-profit group that represents indigent defendants. "We have to get up to speed on it."
One of the nation's first successful challenges to the use of digital fingerprinting in the courtroom came in 2003 in Broward County, Fla.
The only physical evidence linking Victor Reyes to the murder of Henry Guzman was a partial palm print--an intriguing trace of evidence found on duct tape used to wrap the body in a peach-colored comforter.
A forensic analyst with the Broward County Sheriff's Office used a software program known as MoreHits along with Adobe Photoshop to darken certain areas and lighten others--a process called "dodge and burn," which has long been used in traditional photography.
Reyes' attorney, Barbara Heyer, argued that such digital enhancements were inappropriate manipulations of the evidence. "It just hasn't gotten to the point of reliability," Heyer said.
Jurors acquitted Reyes, largely because of sloppy handling of the evidence by police. But they also were troubled by the digital fingerprinting technology used in the case. The jury foreman, Richard Morris, who writes computer-imaging software for a living, said in a recent interview that he and his fellow jurors had significant concerns about it.
No record of image changes
"The makers of the [Adobe] software dropped the ball in not providing a digital record of every action applied to the image," Morris said. He said he would like to see lab analysts or police personnel use software that automatically would log any changes so other examiners could determine later whether the digital print had been altered inappropriately.
(To be continued...) -
FORENSICS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE (PART II)
Ten years ago, only a handful of major police departments used digital fingerprinting. Today, more than 80 percent of the prints submitted to the FBI's Clarksburg facility are digital.
Along with the digital technology has come inexpensive software that allows personnel at many police stations to enhance the prints at their desks. One of the most widely used digital-print software programs, MoreHits, claims about 150 clients among local, state, federal and foreign law-enforcement agencies.
The creators of these explosively popular tools also recognize the potential problems.
"It's like a hammer. It's not evil unless someone who is evil picks it up and uses it," said Erik Berg, a forensic expert with the Police Department in Tacoma, Wash., who developed MoreHits.
Human element crucial
Defenders of the technology contend that concerns about it are overstated because computers only spit out a list of potential matches; typically, human fingerprint examiners at the FBI's lab and at state crime labs make the final matches introduced in court.
"The benefits to law enforcement with digital fingerprints are incalculable in terms of speed of identification and exoneration of the innocent," said Joseph Bonino, former chairman of the FBI's advisory policy board for the Criminal Justice Information Services division in Clarksburg. "They provide a high degree of accuracy, assuming your human examiners are properly trained."
Trust in that safeguard took a major hit last spring when the FBI falsely linked an Oregon lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, to terrorist bombings at Madrid train stations.
When Spanish authorities connected the Madrid print to an Algerian man, the FBI had to admit it erred.
The bureau initially blamed the quality of a digital fingerprint image forwarded from the Spanish National Police. An international panel of experts later concluded that the digital image was fine; instead, the panel found, several veteran FBI examiners had missed "easily observed" details that excluded Mayfield.
Asked last month about the questions involving digital prints, the FBI issued a statement saying it would not comment further until eight teams of forensic scientists--appointed after the Mayfield case unraveled--finish "methodically inspecting every aspect of the latent fingerprint process, which includes the examination of digital images."
The sleek computer equipment inside the bureau's facility in Clarksburg cannot negate this disturbing fact: The FBI does not know if a police agency has altered any of the thousands of new fingerprint images added every day to its database, which now has 48 million sets of prints.
As long as the submissions meet FBI standards on resolution, size and information about the subject, "we wouldn't have any concerns about the quality of images coming into IAFIS," said Steve Fischer, spokesman for the Clarksburg facility, referring to the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
Improprieties possible
But Fischer acknowledged that those standards are not a safeguard against improper manipulation of the images.
"If they were doing something out there," he said, "we wouldn't know about it."
The broader concern, though, remains the quality of the digital images themselves. An FBI-sponsored scientific working group of fingerprint experts cited concerns about the quality of digital images in 2001, when it recommended doubling their resolution, from 500 pixels per inch to 1,000.
But that is only a guideline, and most police departments haven't invested in newer equipment that would upgrade the digital images.
"The quality of the detail . . . in the [lower-resolution] digital image is not sufficient to support a lot of what fingerprint comparisons rely on," said Alan McRoberts, chairman of the working group and editor of the Journal of Forensic Identification.
The roots of using digital images for crime-solving date to the early 1970s, when San Diego police brought a palm print image to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in the hope that scientists could enhance it.
Police had found a bloody palm print on a bedsheet at a murder scene, but the weave of the sheet obscured the print's detail. The lab's scientists managed to separate the print from the bedsheet's weave using a process similar to one employed to enhance photographs taken of the moon and planets.
Since then, the drop in prices for such technology has made it widely available to law enforcement, but critics question whether all police staffers using it fully understand its limitations.
One solution to the problem is simple, according to imaging experts: Have defense attorneys ask the right questions.
Berg, the developer of the MoreHits software, outlined them: "If this is a digital image, has it been enhanced or is this the original capture with no changes to it? If it's been enhanced, I want you to show me what you did and tell me what your training is. And did you go out of your area of expertise to do this?"
If those questions aren't asked, Berg noted, a false identification might not be caught. -
Texas man executed on disproved forensics
Fire that killed his 3 children could have been accidental
By Steve Mills and Maurice Possley
Tribune staff reporters
Published December 9, 2004
CORSICANA, Texas -- Strapped to a gurney in Texas' death chamber earlier this year, just moments from his execution for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, Cameron Todd Willingham declared his innocence one last time.
"I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit," Willingham said angrily. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do."
While Texas authorities dismissed his protests, a Tribune investigation of his case shows that Willingham was prosecuted and convicted based primarily on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. According to four fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed and it is even possible the fire was accidental.
Before Willingham died by lethal injection on Feb. 17, Texas judges and Gov. Rick Perry turned aside a report from a prominent fire scientist questioning the conviction.
The author of the report, Gerald Hurst, reviewed additional documents, trial testimony and an hourlong videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene at the Tribune's request last month. Three other fire investigators--private consultants John Lentini and John DeHaan and Louisiana fire chief Kendall Ryland--also examined the materials for the newspaper.
"There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire," said Hurst, a Cambridge University-educated chemist who has investigated scores of fires in his career. "It was just a fire."
Ryland, chief of the Effie Fire Department and a former fire instructor at Louisiana State University, said that, in his workshop, he tried to re-create the conditions the original fire investigators described.
When he could not, he said, it "made me sick to think this guy was executed based on this investigation. ... They executed this guy and they've just got no idea--at least not scientifically--if he set the fire, or if the fire was even intentionally set."
Even Edward Cheever, one of the state deputy fire marshals who had assisted in the original investigation of the 1991 fire, acknowledged that Hurst's criticism was valid.
"At the time of the Corsicana fire, we were still testifying to things that aren't accurate today," he said. "They were true then, but they aren't now.
"Hurst," he added, "was pretty much right on. ... We know now not to make those same assumptions."
A Tribune investigation of forensic science this year found that many of the pillars of arson investigation that were commonly believed for many years have been disproved by rigorous scientific scrutiny.
Willingham was charged after fire investigators concluded an accelerant had been used to set three separate fires inside the wood-frame, one-story home. Their findings were based on what they described as more than 20 indicators of arson.
Among them: "crazed glass," the intricate, weblike cracks through glass. For years arson investigators believed it was a clear indication that an accelerant had been used to fuel a fire that became exceedingly hot. Now, analysts have established that it is created when hot glass is sprayed with water, as when the fire is put out. It was just such evidence that helped convict Willingham.
Just as Hurst and other consultants dismissed the "crazed glass," they also said other so-called indicators--floor burn patterns and the charring of wood under the aluminum threshold--were just as unreliable.
The experts said evidence indicated the fire had advanced to flashover, a phenomenon that occurs when a fire gets so hot that gas builds up and causes an explosion. After flashover, "it becomes impossible to visually identify accelerant patterns," Hurst reported.
He also said the original finding that charring of wood was due to an accelerant under the threshold "is clearly impossible. Liquid accelerants can no more burn under an aluminum threshold than grease can burn in a skillet, even with a loose-fitting lid."
Prosecutors, though, point to other evidence against Willingham presented at his trial: a jailhouse informant who claimed Willingham confessed to him and stands by his testimony, and witnesses who said Willingham did not try hard enough to save his children.
Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for the Texas governor, said Perry carefully considered "all of the factors" in Willingham's case before deciding against a stay.
Navarro County Judge John Jackson, who as the first assistant district attorney prosecuted Willingham, said that while the experts' review raises some "issues," he has no doubt that Willingham was guilty.
"Does it give me pause? No it does not. I have no reservations."
But some of the jurors who convicted Willingham and sentenced him to death were troubled when shown or told of the new case review.
"Did anybody know about this prior to his execution?" Dorinda Brokofsky asked. "Now I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. Maybe this man was innocent."
A groundbreaking document in fire investigation, the National Fire Protection Association's NFPA 921, was published on Feb. 10, 1992, less than two months after the fatal fire at the Willingham house.
Filled with the new revelations about fire science, NFPA 921 was developed by 30 fire experts, including Lentini and DeHaan, and was written as a guideline for fire investigators. It is considered the standard on fire investigation and is a key reference text for the Texas fire marshal's office. Some investigators, however, have refused to acknowledge it, preferring to stick to the old ways.
The scientific advances played a role in the exoneration of another Texas Death Row inmate, Ernest Willis, earlier this year.
In Pecos County, in West Texas, District Atty. Ori White had to decide whether to retry Willis, who had been convicted of setting a fire that killed two women and had spent 17 years on Death Row. Willis had gotten a new trial on unrelated legal issues in the case.
Before making his decision, White asked Hurst to review the fire evidence. The prosecutor also asked Ryland to conduct an independent review.
Hurst concluded there was no evidence of arson, that the fire most likely was accidental. Ryland concurred. White then dropped the case against Willis and Willis walked free. It was the 12th time Hurst's work had led to dismissal of charges or an acquittal.
Said White: "I don't turn killers loose. If Willis was guilty, I'd be retrying him right now. And I'd use Hurst as my witness. He's a brilliant scientist. If he says it was an arson fire, then it was. If he says it wasn't, then it wasn't."
Hurst and Ryland said the two fires--the one that sent Willis to Death Row and the one that sent Willingham to his execution--were nearly identical.
Of the 944 men and women executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the mid-1970s, only one--Willingham--has been put to death for a crime in which fire was the murder weapon. -
CSI 4 PREMIERS TODAY!!!
Wahooooo!!!!
http://ch5.mediacorptv.com/shows/drama/view/914/1/.html
"Based on real-life Las Vegas night-shift crime scene investigators, CSI follows a team of forensic scientists in the process of solving chilling murder mysteries with a touch of wit, innovative thinking, and methodical scientific inquiry.
"This seasonÂ’s episodes are packed with exciting twists and turns as we see the CSI team flexing their brain matter to tackle even more bizzare and mysterious transgressions into the world of crime."
TONIGHT!! 10pm... only on Channel 5!! -
actually CSI:miami was on last night on AXN
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Don't like CSI : Miami as much as I like the one with Grissom and Catherine and all the other cast.Originally posted by ilovemyrolex:actually CSI:miami was on last night on AXN They're the best so far! Still waiting with bated breath to see how the CSI : NYC show turns out.
btw, have you read the excerpts from Chicago Tribune I cnp'd for you here? Did it specially for you, y'know? 
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uhh.. i take it Grissom's operation was successful
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Yup yup! Eh... I presume...Originally posted by the Bear:uhh.. i take it Grissom's operation was successful
And, this time round, he comes back sans specs and with facial hair!!! Yooooooooohooooooooooo!!!! Grissom! Grissom!! Go, go, Grissom!!! -
may not be conscious at 10pm...
so.... effing... tired
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Originally posted by the Bear:may not be conscious at 10pm...
so.... effing... tired Cannot! Must stay awake and catch the 1st Episode of Season 4!! Cannot miss one!!
*pours a bucket of ice-cold water on da Bear!
What's more, after CSI, there's Missing!! Just saw the trailer for tonight's episode on Channel 5... very well done! -
1 of the episodes is similar to 1 of yr stories posted.
i think there's 1 episode that is similar to a real life crime i remember hearing about in the news before...cant remember which episode..
anyway finally got my CSI season 3 dvds from sch who finally decided to loan me after SO long
nice extras..very nice extras