Continuity mistake: When Brass and Grissom first enter the house of Ken Willard (the guy in the Polaroid), and Greg makes a noise at the door, the two of them turn around to see him. Then the angle changes, and they turn around again, repeating motion.
Revealing mistake: At the end of the episode when Grissom and Archie are listening to the tape from Nick's kidnapping, the screen shows the audio being played. While the audio obviously changes, the lines that sketch what the sound would "look" like don't. In order for the sounds to be different, the lines would have to change too.
Big Middle - S5-E16
Continuity mistake: Season 5 Episode 16 "Big Middle" Sara Sidle marks a triangle on a bed sheet around evidence and then proceeds to cut along the inside of the triangle lines in order to remove the evidence from the sheet. In the next shot, Sara is shown removing the cut out from the sheet, which now has been cut along the outside of the triangle lines.
Other mistake: This episode has four teenagers beat a contemporary to death with hammers, following a practice session with a pile of water melons. The boy is beaten to death sometime during the weekend, - probably on the Saturday.Prior to that is the practice session with the melons, which must be the Friday evening at the latest. The room with the melons is searched on a school day, Monday at the earliest. Yet the melons, in all that Nevada heat after lying around for three days, are still fresh looking, and there are no flies or other insects swarming over the juicy remains.
Factual error: The CSI crew set up an experiment. They put some chloroform into the tire, set the bus on a dynamometer (or some other testing platform) and wait for the tire to fail. The tire fails in the experiment in the exact same amount of time as it did in real life. Problem: They have no idea how much chloroform was used and it would be impossible to match it by luck. More chloroform used would equal quicker failure. Then, there is the heat. The tire traveling over the hot asphalt road would build heat faster then on their testing platform. More heat would mean a quicker failure, too.
Continuity mistake: Outside the brothel, there is an orange post next to the old man's trailer. Suddenly, it is gone in the second scene where the old man is approaching. In the third scene there is one again, but this time it is an orange cone instead of an orange post.
Revealing mistake: At the start when the camera pans away from the dead body, the "D.B." swallows when he's supposed to be dead.
Got Murder? - S3-E12
Continuity mistake: When Catherine is looking through the contents of the birds nest, she takes out the teething ring and places it on a pile on the left. When Gil comes in and asks her what she has, the shot shows the nest and the teething ring is back in it.
Revealing mistake: The dead baby is obviously a doll.
Visible crew/equipment: When Warrick is talking to Greg in the DNA lab comparing Brass's DNA, the boom mic is reflected on the back wall.
Continuity mistake: Supposedly, Paul Millander was 10 years old when his father was killed. A newspaper report read by Sara in 1x08(Time 39:45) says this. It also says that his father died August 17th, 1959. In 2x13(Time 43:18), in the last scene, Grissom looks at Paul's birth certificate. It says that Paul was born August 17th, 1956, which would mean that he was actually 3 years old when his father died. (00:39:45 - 00:43:15)
Who Are You? - S1-E6
Deliberate mistake: A plumber is looking for a leak under the floor of a house, and sees the bones of a hand sticking out of the concrete wall at the side of the house. The concrete is flat, this is because in construction boards are put up and the concrete is poured in, so how were the fingers sticking out of the boards during construction? In reality, the fingers would be inside the concrete, the workman would see nothing, no plot for CSI.
Revealing mistake: In the shot looking across the four monks in the autopsy room, you can see the one closest to the camera taking a deep breath.
Factual error: In Kiss-Kiss,Bye-Bye, Stokes and Brown are watching surveillance footage when a Trans-Am pulls up on screen. They are able to get the license plate number and when they pull it up, the computer says it is a 1978 Trans Am. When looking at the rear end of the car on screen, it is from a 1979-1982 model where the licence plate was placed on the rear bumper. The 1978 model had the license plate mounted between the taillights.
Visible crew/equipment: The prostitutes take turns telling their stories to Captain Brass in their dressing room. But as the long-haired brunette lady tells her story from a distance, you can see a cameraman in the mirror behind her waiting for his turn to film. When she is shown close up, you can see him closer in the mirror, filming.
Continuity mistake: When Grissom and Catherine are looking at Rebecca McCormick's dead body, her mouth is closed in the first two shots, and when we see her again it's open.
Continuity mistake: When Grissom, Brass, and Greg go to the house of the guy in the Polaroid, Brass picks up a credit card from a table. First, he is holding it by his middle finger and thumb from the back, then the shot changes to a close-up and he is holding it with his index finger and thumb along the sides. Then, we return to the previous angle and he is once again holding it with his middle finger and thumb from the back.
Homebodies - S4-E3
Plot hole: Catherine is picking up the gun in the backyard. It is an unfamiliar weapon. She picks it up by using the loop around the trigger and pointing it towards herself. She then checks the clip, but never checks the chamber.
Continuity mistake: When Grissom is on top of the box, talking to Nick, and he tells Nick to put their hands together, you can see that from shot to shot, the alignment of their hands changes. In one shot (from Nick's angle), Grissom's hand is higher than Nick's, as well as Grissom's index finger lines up with Nick's middle finger. In the next shot, their hands line up perfectly. The alignment changes throughout those few shots.
Answer: He doesn't have the authority to arrest him - when anyone is arrested in the show, a police officer does it. Also he tells Ty that he is going to be submitting his case findings to Ty's insurance company, who would no doubt contact the IRS, who then would have him arrested for fraud etc.