Faber's testimony was careful and responsible-and not very significant. She could not say how common the automobile fabric that she had examined is, or how many models and brands use it. Nor could she say how likely it was that the fabric from the car would show up on Wilson's clothes. Faber used no statistics, because there was no way to establish with any precision the probability that the fibres came from the de-tectives' car. DNA tests had proved that blood from one of the detectives was on Wilson's clothes, and based on this fact, as well as on testimony from his accomplice and from Faber, Wilson was convicted and sentenced to death. "Given how much evidence they had in the case, I wasn't crucial," Faber told me. "The prosecutors liked the idea of fibre evidence in addition to everything else. Maybe they thought the jury would like it because it was more 'CSI'-esque."

The Joint Regional Intelligence Center, the first such center in the nation, opened its doors Thursday to help more than 200 law enforcement agencies coordinate their efforts to prevent terrorist attacks.

More than 30 intelligence analysts from the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and other agencies are already working out of the Norwalk facility. Eventually there will be about 60 staffers at the center.

Inside the slick "CSI"-esque center, news headlines, biographies of suspects and maps flashed on large-screen projectors, televisions and computers.

Let's hear it for the home team. Three of five new ABC fall series were made in-house, while NBC's studios cranked out four of its six new shows. It's a trend not lost on uberproducers Dick Wolf and John Wells, who accused NBC of saving its prime 10 p.m. slots for net-owned programs (such as the NBC-produced, CSI-esque Crossing Jordan, starring Jill Hennessy, which will air Mondays at 10 p.m.).