Right on.
Posted on 07/06/2011 6:32:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
On Tuesday, a Florida jury found Casey Anthony not guilty of first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie.
As so often happens in high profile cases, the jury was wrong.
Casey clearly murdered her daughter. Her mom, Cindy, reported that Caylee was missing on July 15, 2008. Casey's cover story was unbelievably ridiculous. When Casey's mom, Cindy, confronted Casey at Casey's boyfriend's apartment, Casey actually claimed that a random baby sitter nobody had ever met had taken Caylee away over a month beforehand.
Cindy called the cops, informing them, "I found my daughter's car today. And it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car." Sure enough, cadaver dogs identified the trunk of Casey's car as a dead body location, and scientists confirmed that a body had decomposed back there. A few months after a jury indicted Casey, police found Caylee's corpse in the woods near Casey's home, duct tape on her head.
The defense did a Johnny Cochrane routine -- they blamed everybody within a 10 mile radius of the murder for the murder. Defense attorney Jose Baez suggested that Casey's dad, George, had sexually abused her during her childhood, without any evidence whatsoever. Baez also claimed that Caylee had drowned in the pool while George was at home, and that George had been involved in dumping the body.
There was no evidence to any of this. It was pure conjecture, a sociopathic response to being caught red-handed. And Casey Anthony is a sociopath: outwardly charming, pathologically lying, indecently self-centered, lacking in shame or guilt, promiscuous, exploitative and irresponsible, and willing to hurt anyone and everyone in order to get her way.
So, why did the jury acquit her? Because the jury system, as currently run, is stupid.
Yes, jury trial is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution (although only with regard to federal cases). It was originally considered a hallmark of civilized criminal justice because citizens did not want to be subjected to government inquisitions, with the court stacked against them. Juries were supposed to be a bulwark against governmental encroachment.
Nowadays, juries have become a hallmark of our heavily bureaucratized system. Those who have day jobs are eager to avoid serving on juries, mainly because the convoluted rules of procedure and evidence have turned summary trials into week-long events. By and large, only the least offensive -- and not coincidentally, the dumbest -- tend to be selected for juries. As the aphorism goes, the problem with juries is that they are generally composed of the 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty.
The phrase "show trial" now means something different -- it means a trial that is a show. That's precisely what O.J. and Casey Anthony were about. Every juror expects to see Sam Waterston get up and deliver opening remarks, and damned if the court system won't do its best to provide that entertainment. The provision of the Constitution that requires a public trial is now used to ensure that trials become media circuses.
Should we embrace the European inquisitorial system, in which judges ask the questions and come up with the decisions? Should we hire professional jurors?
The answer doesn't lie in abolishing the jury system utterly, but in revamping it completely.
The rationale behind juries is still important, particularly with regard to politically-oriented trials: We don't want judges paid by government to have full authority to condemn those of different political persuasions. And the rationale behind a public trial is also still relevant -- we don't want Star Chambers or clandestine hearings. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
By the same token, however, our current jury system is broken beyond repair. If we are truly to restore justice to our system of justice, we must pursue the best and brightest for service, make it easier for them to serve, make the rules of evidence and procedure more efficient, and allow justice to run more smoothly. Most Americans would be willing to serve on a jury for a day. Few would be willing to do so for a week and even fewer for a month. We need more day-long trials and less month-long trials. We need more justice and less showmanship.
Caylee Anthony, sadly, wasn't just the victim of her mother here. She was the victim of a system that did not mete out justice to her murderer. There will be many more cases like Caylee Anthony until we do something to solve this mess.
Hell No and Dammed Hell No
that said we need to stop allowing the lawyers on both sides to cherry pick and dumb down jurors
and I like the idea of a gag order until the trial is over
What I can’t understand is why the prosecutors made it a capital murder case when they knew they only had circumstantial evidence. Not very bright on their part, and the “stupid” jurors probably picked up on that.
Right on.
There’s no other logical reason for taping a child’s head. If you come up with one, I’m open to it. There’s no other logical reason for depositing a child’s body in a swamp. Perhaps there are other reasons for both (the loving mother or some stranger couldn’t bear to see the child’s mandible separated from the rest of her skull; the mother or some other malefactor agreed with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s notion of fertilizer), but none are REASONABLE. The only possible and reasonable conclusion for the condition and location of the body is murder.
There have been murder convictions with no body.
Personally, I thought it obvious that Caylee died from being unable to breathe. I would have voted first degree murder.
I admit I haven’t followed this case at all, but how could a judge allow such speculative and unfounded testimony regarding the alleged actions of the father etc? It sounds like this judge was as idiotic as the jury, and there should have been a mistrial.
How many “correct” decisions did juries make yesterday?
Then why duct tape over the mouth and nose?
You don't cover up an accident with duct tape around the head/mouth/nose. I can understand hiding the remains in a plastic bag, maybe, but duct taping? What would have been the point?
Disclaimer - this is one piece of evidence I latched on to. I didn't watch the entire proceeding, nor am I familiar with all the other evidence or facts as presented to the jury. So, I may be speaking out of ignorance, and if I am, please correct me.
The jury was wrong.
There is no reasonable doubt that Casey killed the child.
This was the fling manufactured crap at a fan defense (maybe Martians did it), and the jury of 7 women was going to set Casey free when her mother Cindy signaled to them that she was on Casey’s side, by her obviously false testimony on the Internet searches.
Doesn’t mean we should get rid of the jury system, though.
A world-renowned forensic pathologist testified on Saturday at the Casey Anthony murder trial that duct tape found near the remains of Ms. Anthony’s 2-year-old daughter was not affixed to her face until after the child was already dead.
“I think the duct tape was a later event, not an early event,” Dr. Werner Spitz told the jury. He added that it was introduced “after decomposition.”
The testimony is significant because it is in direct opposition to the prosecution’s theory that Anthony killed her daughter, Caylee, by smothering her with pieces of duct tape pressed firmly over the toddler’s nose and mouth.
Nazi war criminals were hung based on circumstantial evidence (there is no smoking gun document ordering the Holocaust). Circumstantial evidence is enough.
Apparently not in this case, though.
I was talking to our trial lawyer about a lawsuit my company’s bringing to court. He told me “Juries are the dumbest people on earth. Sometimes I have all the evidence, and I lose. Sometimes I have absolutely no evidence and a bad case and I win”
One pathologist’s opinion (at $400+/hr.) is worth what? All such testimony evokes is more questions. How long after death? Minutes? Hours? Months? But more importantly WHY? What’s reasonable here? If, in fact, a proof actually exists for the post-mortem placement of the tape, then the motive for such placement assuredly doesn’t. Are we then simply to dismiss the taping as a random act? Or to accept it as a fact (in which, apparently, even the defense concurred by buying the expert testimony that established its existence)?
Creates reasonable doubt.
If a prosecutor bets the whole ball of wax on a first degree murder conviction, when the evidence may only support (or more likely support a conviction on a lesser charge) he risks confusing the jury and getting a loss. That is what I think happened here.
I remember I was in a bookstore with my two year old daughter when we got separated for about 3 minutes. After panicking and running around looking through the bookshelves I ran to the counter to make an announcement.
The fact that the woman didn’t call for an entire month is proof enough of her guilt. Anyone seeking anything more has been watching way too much TV.
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