Um, CSI April 10? (unboxed spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

This was has me just a little puzzled.

A little girl has died. Doc Robbins says that cause of death was “atlanta-occipital disarticulation,” or, so far as I can tell, her skull had become dislocated from her spinal cord, in this case, the result of blunt force trauma. There were also indications of exposure to sodium hydroxide.

There are also what appear to be finger marks on her arm, as though she might have been gripped tightly.

The upshot: The little girl (Inez or Ynez) and her step-siblings had been playing hide-and-seek. Inez hides in a cabinet containing some drain cleaner.

Stepdad finally wakes up and asks where she is. The other kids take him to the cabinet, where she is dying. Not having a car, he takes a bus to take her to the hospital. At some point, she dies, he exits the bus, and eaves her in a discarded box.

Catherine berates him for having taken a bus to get the child to the hospital. Being an ex-con, he apparently did not want to call 911, knowing that he would be the focus of an investigation.

Catherine had also earlier berated Hodges for implying that it was such a tragedy that a cute little girl had died, her inferring that he meant that a homely child would have been less a tragedy.

Now, I realize, it’s just a TV show, but here is the puzzle:

The cause of death was ruled to be the spinal injury, but there was no indication of the step-dad having laid a hand on her other than to get her to the hospital. In fact, he was distraught that she appeared to be in pretty bad shape.

Now, early in the program, there was a flashback scene indicating how the investigators thought the injury happened, by the child having been violently shaken, but that did not come up later in the investigation.

So what did I miss?

2

I was just as confused as you were. I kept thinking they were going to have it so one of the siblings ended up fighting with Inez and accidentally pushed her too hard against the drain pipe under the sink, but that didn’t happen. The kids even behaved as if they had done something too. I don’t understand how if the girl was sitting quietly under the sink she could hurt herself hard enough to dislocate her skull.

3

I don’t remember the cause-of-death disconnect, but what you’re calling a flashback scene is more like a theory scene. While talking out a case, they’ll often show those scenes as how things could have happened given the evidence they have. Sometimes they’ll gather new evidence and revisit a scene with it changed slightly to reflect new evidence or a competing theory. And sometimes they don’t pan out at all, as in this case.

4

Yeah. I know.

There’s some discussion on the CSI board on imdb.com. A poster posited that the little girl passed out from the fumes and bumped her head while hiding. That accounted for the “blunt force trauma” that caused the death. I think that might be what the writers intended, but it didn’t come across well. Another posted that the writers’ brains are still on strike. I think they might be on to something.

5

The girl cracked her head on a pipe underneath the sink. Catherine noted the blood there. It was pretty obvious, actually, if you were paying attention. They had already established the blunt force to the head, so showing the blood told the tale.

She was hiding and spilled the drain cleaner. Either it was the fumes, or more likely, she jerked back after getting drain cleaner on her, bumping her head.

I really liked the secondary story about the first suspect. Halfway through the show, I pointed out that Brass never listens to anything other than a confession from the suspects. The guy’s story was not unreasonable, but he (and Catherine) acted as though it were impossible. And he was right – they were reckless with his life, especially with no evidence other than the box.

6

Yeah, I keep forgetting this is “CSI World,” we’re talking about. When you can blow up a reflection on someon’s eye from 10 feet and get a picture of what they’re looking at, or when you can spin a piece of pottery and retrieve a voice recording of what the person was saying as they were molding it, it’s not a big stretch that a child hiding underneath a sink can bump the head hard enough to cause an “internal decapitation.”

7

That part of the episode really annoyed me. This guy got high and danced nude in public, and just because a group of young kids happened to see him he’s branded for the rest of his life as a “sexual predator” and treated as if he were a worthless piece of shit with no rights except to bend over, hold his ankles, and take it.

8

I thought maybe she convulsed hard enough to sustain the injury. I was also under the impression that she drank the drain cleaner. The whole “taking the bus” thing is what got me though. Wouldn’t the driver had thought something was odd?

9

I thought the drain cleaners were spilled after she hit her head, like she was convulsing or seizing and kicked them over. It hadn’t occured to me that it was the fumes that led to her hitting her head, though now I can see how that makes sense. I still don’t see where the bruises on her arms fit in. Did they come from the step-father lifting her up?

And agreed LurkMeister, Catherine really pissed me off this episode with her treatment of the first suspect. When she was talking to Grissom at the end, my first thought was “she owes that guy a huge apology” so I liked the confrontation at the end. Does anyone know if his actions would actually force him to register as a sex offender in real life? It seems like that would make a mockery of the whole thing.

10

According to Nevada Law:

It’s also defined in the law as a “sexual offense.” It looks like he would have been assessed as to whether he had to register as a sex offender.

His story would probably make him tier 1, where he only registers with the police, but it’s not inconceivable he was categorized tier 2, especially if the public was demanding a crackdown on sex offenders. On CSI, there are so many sex crimes that that’s probably what the public wants.

Oh – I also liked the opening sequence, where we thought the comedian would be the victim.

11

I checked my recording of the episode to verify my memory. Leo Findley took ecstasy and peyote, then the next morning “was so high he thought he was in a living cartoon” so he went outside and “performed a joyous dance to the sun god Ra” which happened to be viewed by twenty preschoolers in the yard next door. I don’t understand how that qualifies as lewdness with a child under 14 years as defined in Reality Chuck’s quote of Nevada law. There was no “intent of arousing, appealing to, or gratifying the lust or passions or sexual desires of that person or of that child” in his actions. Grissom even stated that he was “never charged with child molestation, let alone abuse” yet he was forced to register as a sexual predator, apparently under the assumption that someone who gets high and dances naked without first verifying that there are no children present obviously secretly harbors a desire to rape kids :rolleyes:

Yes, I know it’s just a TV show, but the inclusion of that storyline served no purpose but to throw a huge red herring into the case. And it does make a mockery of the whole “registered sex offender” program.

12

That’s just because you’re seeing Findley’s side of the situation instead of looking through “think of the children!” hysteria-tinged prosecutorial glasses.

13

Anyway, many people would say, given current events, that it’s a perfectly realistic depiction of what would happen IRL.

14

Yeah, but on ecstacy and peyote, his “joyous dance” could have included a public wank.

Having seen some frightening headlines on Fark about stupid teenagers having to register as sex offenders for preposterous reasons, I can believe that a mob of angry parents would be sure that guy ended up on Meghan’s List.

ETA: I was confused by the marks on her arms as well. I thought the marks indicated she’d been shaken. I can see her convulsing and hitting her head and knuckles, but not the arm marks.

15

It’s ultimately up to the DA, but section one that I quoted clearly makes the incident prosecuteable. He did perform what seems to fit the definition of a lewd act in front of a child and a DA could easily get a conviction on it (the DA would just have to say he was getting a thrill out of it. Further, he had no real defense on the facts of the case_. The only really questionable issue is why he was level 2 (as described) rather than level one (which seems to fit better), but since CSI has a lot of sex crimes (there seems to be one every week), it wouldn’t be surprising if there were public pressure to classify more people to level 2.

Well, it deserves some mockery. There’s no evidence that it keeps children safer – our local police, for instance, haven’t had a single case of a registered sex offender committing a sex crime in the past several years. Nearly all people arrested had never been arrested before.

The law is horribly flawed even in its best instances.

16

I have heard that only 10% of registered sex offenders are considered dangerous. In CA for decades, many of them were gay men who were caught having sex in semi-public places. :mad:

We really need to clear out those laws.

17

That was probably the point.

18

While reading a news article, I found a link to a cite for my previous post. This news story in which “public urination” got a man put on the sex offender registry. So I can see a nude dance to Ra getting you on The List.

Anyone else think that character will end up being the season’s Big Bad?

19

I’m only keeping up with it on CBS online when I get free time. Aren’t they still looking for the miniature killer?

20

I’m not a forensic pathologist but as an armchair coroner I would speculate that the cause of death was an MPH to the chest.

Major Plot Hole