It is known as the “CSI Effect,” and it strikes fear in the hearts of even the most grizzled prosecutors.

It is a real-life phenomenon created by the fictional, high-tech TV police drama that makes juries skeptical of cases that have not been solved through the magic of crime scene technology and other James Bond-style hocus pocus.

The effect is so real that prosecutors have begun to address it during the jury selection process known as voir dire, which means to tell the truth. They tell potential jurors that the evidence in most criminal cases won’t include a bloody fingerprint, or any fingerprint for that matter.

Matt Baker (left) appears in Judge Ralph Strother's 19th State District Court during an April 9 bail reduction hearing. Baker's attorney is asking Strother to approve taxpayer funds to cover expert testimony. (Duane A. Laverty photo, file)

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There likely won’t be blood-spatter evidence that pinpoints the exact angle from which a gun was fired, DNA from dandruff left behind by the perpetrator or soil and fungus debris on the bottom of shoes that could have only come from a specific trail near Lawson’s Point in Cameron Park.

Prosecutors are so concerned about the “CSI Effect” that they have started calling crime scene analysts as trial witnesses to explain why certain evidence was not found just so curious jurors won’t wonder why they can’t do it like Detective Horatio Caine on CBS’s “CSI: Miami.”

Expert testimony and scientific evidence seems destined to play major roles in Matt Baker’s trial, McLennan County’s most recent high-profile murder case. Baker, 37, a former Baptist minister in Central Texas, claims his 31-year-old wife, Kari, was despondent over the death of a daughter seven years before and took her own life with sleeping pills while their two daughters were asleep down the hall and he was out renting a movie and buying more pre-mixed alcoholic drinks.

Hewitt police, who conducted a cursory investigation, found a typed, unsigned note near the bed and were satisfied at the time with Baker’s explanation that his wife had been deeply depressed and that she obviously killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills mixed with a Fuzzy Navel drink.

Justice of the Peace Billy Martin did not go to the scene, ruled her death suicide and did not order an autopsy. Kari Baker’s parents, Linda and James Dulin, who do not believe their daughter committed suicide, persuaded officials to reopen the investigation and got a court order to exhume her body for autopsy. That resulted in Martin revising his death finding to “undetermined.”

The Dulins filed a wrongful death lawsuit against their son-in-law and hired a number of experts for their civil lawsuit who said that Baker’s story of how his wife died, how long he said he was gone and the condition of her body don’t match their analysis of physical evidence in the case.

McLennan County prosecutors relied on many of those expert reports from the Dulins’ lawsuit — plus testimony from a woman with whom they say Baker was pursing an extramarital affair — to gain a murder indictment against Baker last month. They have charged him with drugging her and then smothering her with a pillow in April 2006.

Will Baker get experts?

Now that Baker has hired a Kerrville attorney, Richard Ellison, and arranged to post a $250,000 bail bond, the former Waco Center for Youth chaplain is claiming he is indigent and has asked 19th State District Judge Ralph Strother to approve taxpayer funds so he can hire experts to assist with his defense.

Ellison has said that Baker cannot get a fair trial without county funds to hire the experts, none of whom will come cheap. Ellison has indicated in a motion that he needs to hire a crime scene reconstruction expert, a toxicologist, a pharmacologist, a pathologist and a psychologist to combat prosecution witnesses in those fields.

Stan Schwieger, former president of the McLennan County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that indigent defendants are “basically entitled to the basic building blocks of a defense,” including court-approved funds to retain expert witnesses, if that is what it takes.

“That doesn’t mean you get every one of them that you might want,” Schwieger said. “You have to justify why you would require them and just why they are a necessity. But if you can do that and you can’t afford them, then the state gets to tote the note.”

Depending on the extent of their involvement and whether they are needed for testimony or if materials require additional testing, each expert witness easily could cost $10,000 to $15,000, Schwieger said.

So how does a jury decide which expert is telling the truth or has more credibility if each side has one saying something contrary to the other?

“The courts have said that, basically, it is within the province of the jury to believe who they want to believe,” Schwieger said. “They can figure out the truth, but, as an attorney, you have to make it understandable for a jury. You have to break it down in terms that they understand.”

Waco psychiatrist Stephen L. Mark said that when he is appointed to assist with a criminal case, it normally involves assessing a defendant’s competency to stand trial, whether he was insane at the time of the offense and whether evidence exists in his background that could aggravate or mitigate his punishment.

More rare, Mark said, is to be asked to assess the mental condition of someone whom he cannot see or talk to, such as in the case of Kari Baker. In 32 years, he has done it twice, he said.

A psychologist appointed for the Baker defense will be asked to assess if she was suicidal by speaking with her husband, friends, co-workers and others and examining any medical or psychological records that may exist, Mark said.

“You do a psychiatric autopsy, if you will,” Mark said. “There are a number of things you can do, but I don’t think it would be that precise in any case, looking at it after the fact. You can point to pros and cons, think this is why it may have occurred, look at all the factors involved, like whether there were cyclical bouts of depression. But the bottom line is that you may never really know for sure.”

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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