Some major recent acquittals: here in Canada, the Air India case. And in the U.S. the celebrity murder, the Robert Blake case.

One hypothesis is the CSI effect. Are juries across the country demanding the sort of high tech evidence we see on TV?

As someone who has had a couple of opportunities to report crimes to the police, I was always amazed at the low-techness of it all. CSI be damned, it's not even like Law & Order! On one occasion, I was told once by a telephone operator when I insisted that the the phone company must have a way to find out who had been crank-calling me "Don't believe everything you see on TV!"

I realise it seems kind of quaint that I kept a Q-tip with saliva of a man who spat on my car, but at the time I really believed they would want that sort of thing to prove who he was. The cop very kindly didn't laugh, but did tell me: "We don't even do that when they steal cars, let alone spit on them."

But the Air India case wasn't a jury trial, it was a judge trial. Could the same issues be at play there? Does the CSI effect affect judges? Or was it simply a matter of not enough evidence?

(N.B. I was surfing Althouse when I found this article.)