PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Legal experts believe jurors in the Casey Anthony trial wanted to see definitive forensic evidence.

It’s known as the “CSI Effect.”

“Lawyers and judges worry with the forensic shows on television that juries expect there to be forensic evidence in any significant case and the forensic evidence was notably weak in this case,” Duquesne University Law School Professor Ken Hirsch said.

Tonya Sulia Goodman, a former federal prosecutor, says jurors should not have looked past Casey Anthony’s actions just because there was little physical evidence.

“She threw her daughter away in a swamp where she was undetected, where she was hidden for six months and because of that, almost all of the forensic evidence had been essentially washed away,” Goodman said.

“And so I think the jurors here really gave her a free pass,” she added.

Goodman believes part of that free pass may be because Casey Anthony didn’t look like a killer to the jury.

“I think that if Casey Anthony was not young, white and attractive, I think that this verdict may have turned out differently,” she said.

Hirsch says the Anthony jury probably heard a different trial than much of the public, especially if the public got its nightly recaps from TV commentators.

“Sometimes they focus on the evidence that supports the story that they have in mind and neglect or slight the evidence that is contradictory or that leaves doubts and I think that’s what happened in this case,” he explained.

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