No one needs me weighing in on the Casey Anthony case -- once Nancy Grace hunts her down and kills her we can all rest -- but God the more I read what the jurors have to say the more enraged I get. These people not only can't follow instructions, they refused to consider the crystal-clear evidence that was presented to them and then randomly decided to accept scenarios invented from whole cloth instead. ("Nothing indicated there was any reason Casey would murder Caylee." Um -- how about the fact that she was gone for a month and she was having the time of life LYING to everyone who would listen?! THAT would indicate plenty.) If a better understanding of DNA would have made the O.J. jury realize he was guilty -- it probably wouldn't have, by the way, the case became about race -- then the CSI effect's unintended opposite consequence is probably far more damaging to the legal system, which more often than not does not rely on forensic evidence to win a case. I don't watch fake crime shows -- truth is always stranger (and more interesting) than fiction, so it's "48 Hours Mystery" and "Snapped" for me, or nothing -- but it's high-time the fictional shows start showing how a huge percentage of cases are proved by circumstantial evidence and nothing more. Maybe then your average jury of "peers" will understand what these idiots clearly could not. A sad week for the justice system -- and for America.
13 comments:
I disagree, Kenneth. The jury followed its instructions perfectly.
In our system, the jury serves as an important check on the power of our government to imprison people. It is only supposed to find a person guilty when the state doesn't meet its burden of proof.
It's supposed to be hard to convict, by design. It was thought it better to let the guilty go free than let an innocent person be imprisoned or put to death.
Instead, you are arguing for a system that lessens the government's burden of proof. Think about how many innocent people are put to death or are in jail and DNA clears them. How many more innocent people would suffer in jail and not be able to gain their freedom if we allowed insufficient evidence to convict?
Finally, you are looking at the evidence and are filling in the gaps with assumptions. In law school, they hammer into your head to never assume. Jury instructions are designed to limit how much you can assume. It tries to prevent it as much as possible.
The jury was brave to follow the law and come to its correct verdict. There just wasn't enough direct evidence to convict her.
So rail against prosecutors, if you must, but leave the jury out of it. It did its job just as it was supposed to do.
The jury didn't find her innocent, they found her not guilty. Not guilty means the state didn't meet its burden, not innocent.
I agreed with the jury that the prosecutors failed to bring a sufficient case. If you can't prove HOW someone died, you can't prove that any particular person did it. Inference and innuendo are insufficient to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
If you want to be disgusted at someone, be disgusted at the prosecutors who chose to bring an insufficient case instead of waiting for new developments to surface. There is no statute of limitations on murder, so there was no rush to bring it to trial.
Instead, they hoped the jury would allow character assassination and sketchy evidence to prejudice them enough against the defendant to convict her. It was lazy lawyering at its abusive worst.
@Miche: in the words of the great Kim Wilde, you'll never be so wrong ...
Miche: If it is a requirement to prove exactly HOW someone died, then how are people convicted of murder when the body is never found? Yes, it happens. (Scott Peterson was convicted with far less "hard" evidence than the prosecutors presented in this case.)
I agree with Kenneth -- and some REALLY BIG legal minds -- that the jury doesn't know the difference between "a shadow of a doubt" and "reasonable doubt." This has nothing to do with not meeting the burden of proof -- did you even watch the trial? The proof was overwhelming. It was circumstantial -- as most cases are -- but it was overwhelming.
Trust me, if this woman were of color, she'd be in the electric chair right now.
Sorry Kenneth, I have to agree with Miche's well argued comment. Do I think Casey Anthony is guilty in the death of her daughter? Sure I do! Do I think the prosecution proved that beyond a reasonable doubt? Absolutely not. Blame the police and prosecutors, not the jury!
Miche: If it is a requirement to prove exactly HOW someone died, then how are people convicted of murder when the body is never found? Yes, it happens.
I agree with Ken -- and some REALLY BIG legal minds -- that the jury doesn't know the difference between "a shadow of a doubt" and "reasonable doubt." This has nothing to do with not meeting the burden of proof -- did you even watch the trial? The proof was overwhelming. It was circumstantial -- as most cases are -- but it was overwhelming. (Scott Peterson was convicted with far less "hard" evidence than the prosecutors presented in this case.)
Trust me, if this woman were of color, she'd be in the electric chair right now.
I agree that there are jurisdictions in which you find many jurors who are extremely obliging in connecting the dots especially where defendants are any shade of brown. Texas is one such lovely place, as is Arizona, my law school friends who practice there, assure me.
You all forget that the jury wasn't allowed to hear all the evidence or discussions that the television audience were allowed to hear because it would have been illegally prejudicial and unconstitutional in some cases. With what they heard, they decided correctly. There were too many holes in the prosecution's case.
I'm not saying that juries in Texas or Arizona or Oklahoma or even Kansas wouldn't have been all to happy to convict her without sufficient evidence. But that is not a win for anyone because it means that we are no longer a nation of laws and are a nation of vigilantism. The fact that some juries break the law to reach their decisions is apropos of nothing.
When the Founding Fathers created our system to protect defendants, they did so knowing that in Europe kings could throw people in jail for just about any reason and evidence may or may not have been required. There was no recourse. They wanted to ensure that the new nation had protections against that sort of system.
Look to Syria or Bahrain to see how those systems work. It isn't pretty.
The price we pay for those protections against our government's abuse of its power is letting people we *think* are guilty go free in order to prevent innocent people from being jailed without a fair trial.
Obviously, it isn't perfect. When you study all those innocent people on death row, you quickly learn the system doesn't work too often. But we should celebrate the system when it does work, even if we disagree with the outcome.
If we were in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or Syria, we would probably already be in jail for being gay and out. We wouldn't have the luxury of making the state prove its case against any standard. Let's be glad of the rights we enjoy.
Finally, if it is any comfort, I can promise you that she won't "get away with it." She'll suffer in many other ways the rest of her life. She imploded her family and threw them under the train with her abuse allegations. Her mother is facing potential perjury charges because of her. It's unlikely she'll find any decent man who will date her or have a child with her.
I can just about guarantee she won't be out of the justice system for that long. Even if she isn't back in jail in a few years for not paying the huge cost of prosecution and court costs, she's too stupid to not break the law again. She already has check fraud convictions.
As OJ can tell her, the public can make you pay the rest of your life. It isn't prison but it's not freedom, either.
Everyone just needs to take a breath and drop the hysteria. It's just a case. Thousands of children are murdered by parents and others every year and no one cares because the media ignores them. It's like that episode on South Park where the media is interested when the missing girl is white, but cant' care less when she's brown.
Let's spread a little of this outrage toward all those children's cases and maybe get something good out of it.
>> With what they heard, they decided correctly. There were too many holes in the prosecution's case.<<
I'm sorry, Miche. But just because you said this -- repeatedly -- doesn't make it true.
I (respectfully) disagree.
Sadly, the same people who are screaming that the jury was full of idiots are mostly the same people who get their jury duty notice and immediately start planning how they are going to get out of serving.
Yes, I don't really want to be stuck in a courthouse listening to poorly prepared attorneys (which is normally the case), but if I'm ever charged with a crime I want a jury that isn't the remainder of the people who figured out a way to dodge their responsibility.
Whatever doubts existed in this case were not, in my opinion, reasonable by any stretch. At a bare minimum, she should have bee convicted of manslaughter.
As for Casey's life being ruined, google "Karla Homolka", a Canadian who assisted her husband in serial murder, and managed a sweetheart plea bargain to testify against her husband (home videos later showed that she was far more of an active participant than previously believed) - she is now free, procreating and living in the Bahamas with her new husband.
Casey will soon be back to her partying ways and making big bucks as a celebrity.
Miche's right, Kenneth. Anthony was accused of MURDER, not of being somehow connected to her death. Those are big distinctions. The prosecution kept throwing shit against the wall, hoping for something to stick.
I'm glad to see this verdict, whether or not she did it (and she probably did). It proves that at least in some cases, the jury does its job. As for Nancy Grace, the world will be a better place when that wretched hag is off the air.
Thank you, Miche, for your reasoned and informed opinion that was not formed by the media maelstrom on the 24-hour networks that--as usual--did no research themselves but merely cheery-picked pieces of inflamitory information to guarantee that viewers would come back for more. Nancy Grace is a sideshow, not a lawyer.
I understand that a child is dead, whether she was intentionally murdered or killed through some act of stupidity (chloroform as a sleeping inducement). What the media focused on was that a child was killed and someone must pay; but the charges against the mother were for murder, intentional, motivated murder and it wasn't proven to the jury.
As Alan Dershowitz wrote yesterday: "A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty. That's because only one person is on trial in a criminal case, and if that one person is acquitted, then by definition there can be no justice for the victim in that trial.
A criminal trial is neither a whodunit nor a multiple choice test. It is not even a criminal investigation to determine who among various possible suspects might be responsible for a terrible tragedy. In a murder trial, the state, with all of its power, accuses an individual of being the perpetrator of a dastardly act against a victim. The state must prove that accusation by admissible evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even if it is "likely" or "probable" that a defendant committed the murder, he must be acquitted, because neither likely nor probable satisfies the daunting standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, a legally proper result—acquittal in such a case—may not be the same as a morally just result. In such a case, justice has not been done to the victim, but the law has prevailed."
By all y'all's logic, Scott Peterson -- and virtually every other person ever charged with murder in America -- should be wandering the streets!
And people, let's not be too impressed by Miche's legal mumbo jumbo: he did go to law school at Arizona State :-)
Oh no you didn't! I can't believe you played the ASU card, Kenneth! ;-)
Although we respectfully disagree on this one, we will always be Sun Devils.
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