Yeah, good point.
Maybe Horatio is like Cyclops from X-Men - he has to wear his shades or his eyes shoot laser beams from them. And Marg Helgenberger needs to put those things away. Professional women don’t dress with their funbags hanging out like that - well, not off-the-street professionals, any way.
Actually, the first person they find with the wombat teeth is almost never the actual criminal. What is presented to the audience in Act 2 as a slamdunk piece of evidence almost always has some mundane explanation, sending the characters “back to square one” for Act 3.
The CSI shows are fond of pointless coincidences and cheap irony, i.e. Person A kills Person B believing B killed A’s sister but the final piece of evidence (oh cruel cruel fate!) shows that A’s sister was a suicide, or an accident, or had been unknowingly killed by A himself when he accidentally spilled ski wax into the jacuzzi, creating a chain reaction that eventually led to the fatal toothpaste explosion everyone initially assumed was a bomb planted by B, who, despite having all kinds of loopy evidence implicating him, was (they discover in the final seconds) in Cleveland at the time.
Hey, mind your own dang business! :eek:
Don’t listent o him, Marg–you do *not * need to put them away! 
trumpet fanfare Degree in forensic investigation (crime scenes) here! 
You would most certainly note in your case notes that when you arrived the lights were off. However, the vast majority of the time you are there at the crime scene to see what happened. Generally, light helps this task, so you would want to get light into the room as soon as you could. This may include turning on the lights. If you thought there might be fingerprints or DNA evidence on the light switch then you would use the illumination of a proper flashlight (possibly LED, possibly blue to make trace blood stains stand out with more contrast, but never one of those bloody 10-watt ‘dimlights’) to process that light switch before turning on the lights. At least, that’s how we would do it.
Most of the time though, and especially for what we call “volume crime” - incidents where no person was injured/threatened, or very mild assault type incidents - you could wait until daylight to go to the scene, so you could examine it in the light without needing to turn lights on, or you could attend while the people living there are home and they could turn the lights on for you. In high-profile cases, such as murders, you may need to be there at night, and you may want to be wary and not turn on the lights, but then you would bring high-powered light sources with you. Still, if you’ve processed the light switch first there’s usually nothing wrong with turning on the lights.
In some types of incidents it may be dangerous to turn on the lights at the scene. For example, people who set up indoor hydroponic Cannabis labs or clandestine drug laboratories might sprinkle booby-traps about the place to deter thieves and investigators. Some such booby-traps include filling light bulbs with gasoline or other flammable liquids, so that when the light is switched on the bulb explodes. You usually know going into a scene beforehand whether it will require such vigilance and care, though - it’s not something you usually would stumble in to.
Edited to rephrase a potentially misleading statement.
Caiata, thanks a lot for the information
I notice on NCIS that Ducky’s autopsy room has a light bright enough to block out even the suggestion of genitalia on all the male corpses.
I’m glad somebody else said this first. I was thinking some of the actresses had moved past the ‘flourescent lighting’ stage of life and were well into the ‘dive bar neon’ stage of life.
No offense intended of course. 
Why do they go into a crime scene wearing their ordinary clothes? Havn’t they heard of cross-contamination? In true life (here in the UK anyway) CSI personell wear those disposable paper coveralls and face masks.
I noticed that in previews for this. Convenient light shard placement.
I happened to see a rerun episode the other day… One where while hunting for a sniper the Miami guys found some sort of resin something or other glue that (through their magical resin glue use database) they were able to track down to the roofs of three buildings in a several block radius.
Deep voice speaking main character “I need it narrowed down to one, before he kills again!” (commercial break)
:dubious:
Um… Just go to all three buildings at the same time. He’ll be on one of them.
I blame Alien. A ship loaded with petroleum must surely have had the wherewithal and the energy necessary for someone to turn the bloody lights on already! Had they done so, Harry Dean Stanton wouldn’t have become Purina Alien Chow quite so quickly.
Sure he would have “The Three of us are going over here You go over there, alone. Where it’s dark.” Once they sent him off alone, he was done. And the Alien came down from above, so I’m not sure he’d a’ seen it.
Then they go and do it again an again. I hate that movie.
“I need it narrowed down to one, so someone else doesn’t get to make the arrest other than me!”
Now here’s one thing CSI does that I actually don’t have a problem with, despite its gross inaccuracies. Seriously, how unattractive are the damn coveralls? They could make Ally freakin’ McBeal look like Kirstie Alley, just imagine what they would do to Gil Grissom’s ass! shudder
Which is why the perfect crime would be to sever someone’s femoral artery. The coroner will never be able to determine the cause of death!
