The Finger - S2-E14
Visible crew/equipment: Nick goes into a house with a bird inside. As he enters the house, you can see a crew person (with a beard) in the reflection of the frame.
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.
Continuity mistake: Stephanie Watson's supposed killer is, on the TV, named as Mark Kelso, but later when Catherine is going over the DNA sample with Greg, it is a match to a Dwight Kelso - supposedly the same person.
Continuity mistake: When Sara is waiting with Greg for the results for what was inside the tyre that exploded, she grabs the paper straight off the printer, reads it, looks at Greg and takes off immediately to inform Gil. When Grissom looks at the paper, you can see Greg's name is signed at the bottom as confirmation, but he never got anywhere near the paper.
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.
Factual error: Sara calculates the time needed to sabotage the tire at a minute to a minute and a half. That is, remove the valve core, allow the majority of the air to escape (cannot pour anything into the tire while the air is escaping) pour in enough chloroform to sabotage the tire, replace the valve core, and air the tire to pressure. Even with an industrial air compressor, it would take over 2 minutes to air that tire to full pressure.
Continuity mistake: The Camaro at the crash scene is a late second generation model (built from 1970 - 1981), however in the flashbacks to the crash it's a third generation car (82 - 92). The difference in body styles is quite pronounced.
Cats in the Cradle... - S2-E20
Deliberate mistake: A father, daughter (both construction\demolition experts) and the boyfriend try to frame the husband for attempted murder by planting a pipe bomb in her (wife\daughter\girlfriend's) car. The bomb is a stick of dynamite inside a pipe with 2 endcaps on it. A pipe is used to hold a improvised munition together: i.e., homemade explosives, or something like Anfo. The pipe provides the casing for the explosive material. Or, it is used to keep the shrapnel fragments around the explosives (like nails or pellets around a stick of dynamite). For dynamite, you simply drill a hole (in rock, in concrete, in whatever.) and drop the stick in. It needs no extra casing. The family would have known that. But the CSI crew needed some evidence to analyze and the blasting cap + detonator circuit would have given them nothing to study. The endcap with the hole drilled for the blasting cap was the case solver.
Cats in the Cradle... - S2-E20
Continuity mistake: Marcie Tobin's BMW 7 Series changes from a newer (at the time) E38 model to the first generation E23 when it explodes. Obviously the production couldn't afford to blow up a brand new car so the older model was substituted.
Continuity mistake: When Catherine walks up the stairs, Horatio Caine aims his gun upwards. In the next shot he has his arms down. (00:36:10)
Revealing mistake: As they recover the car from the canal and open the door to reveal the girls dead mother, you can see her still breathing as they lie her on her back to examine her.
Revealing mistake: When the CSI from Miami and Catherine are in the autopsy, the guy goes to take a sample from the eyes of the dead woman. When he moves the swab towards her eye, you can see the actress' top eyelid move instinctively. She's supposed to have been dead for hours.
Continuity mistake: In this episode, Catherine is sent to Miami on a lead of a missing child. There they find a car in a swamp, and when the pull the car out and open the door, a female body falls halfway out. When this happens you can see the woman playing the victim breathing. You see her stomach moving up and down.
Revenge Is Best Served Cold - S3-E1
Other mistake: Stokes tells "Michaelangelo" he is looking for a blue Honda, blue rims, blue tint. The picture Michaelangelo shows Stokes and Willows is an Acura RSX, not a blue Honda. (Note: The red Honda that the victim was driving is not the one that Stokes is looking for.) Just because the two car brands are owned by the same parent company does not mean that they are interchangeable when describing them. You certainly couldn't call a Cadillac a GM and not be considered wrong even though they are both made by the same parent company (GM).
Continuity mistake: In the bit where Nick and Warrick decide who is going in the pool, Nick loses and begins to remove his top while still wearing his latex gloves. The camera switches to a different angle and while he is still taking his top off, his gloves have disappeared.
Continuity mistake: When Sara is trying to match up bite plates. In the first two close-up shots of Sara's face, you can see an out-of-focus shot of Greg's sleeve on the right side of the screen, seconds before he actually appears in the scene.
Factual error: When Grissom calls Greg into his office to ask him about his Scandinavian heritage, Greg says his grandfather was kicked out of Norway for getting his grandmother pregnant before they were married. Norway did not kick people out of country for that reason. Anyone who does family research will see that 7 out of 10 times a child was born out of wedlock or illegitimate, and nothing was done about it. It is recorded in the church records and that is it, there were lots of reasons this happened that children were born to unwed parents. Main reason was that they applied to be married and the marriage was disapproved of for one reason or another. Europeans are not as prudish as Americans about this stuff. A lot of Scandinavians nowadays live together, have kids and never get married.
Revealing mistake: When Grissom and the Coroner are discussing the short cadaver's injuries you can see the little guy breathe between takes.
Continuity mistake: When Sara has finished processing Melanie Grace at the slot machine, Melanie gets down from her chair and a uniformed officer can be seen helping her down. However in the next shot the officer has disappeared completely.
The Execution of Catherine Willows - S3-E6
Continuity mistake: At one point Catherine is at the coffee shop and the parents of a murdered girl come to talk to her. She is holding her coffee in the right hand and her cell phone rings and she grabs it with her left. The shot switches angles while Catherine is talking and her cell phone has magically shifted to her right hand.
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.