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.
If your lawyer has all the evidence and loses, you need to consider obtaining new counsel. Jurors are only dumb if lawyers permit them to be ignorant.
No, all it creates is chaos. Reason still prevails. Because there’s no reasonable motive for taping the child’s head after death, and there is reasonable motive for taping the child’s head prior to, and for the purpose of, death, and the expert witness’s testimony is NOT PROVED, the reasonable conclusion is still murder.
Btw, I love Sarah, too.
The reason I brought up that case is to show that the State may never be able to establish the exact cause of death yet may still prove murder. Otherwise, all a murderer would need to do would be what the British murderer did.
I really hope you never get charged with something you didn't do and get a jury eager to make snap decisions.
It is unforgiveable to imprison or execute an innocent person based on what the jury feels emotionally.
Or, perhaps, he has different experiences with authority than you do. If a person has a history of being considered guilty by authorities when they are completely innocent, he'd naturally be much less likely to contact them when something bad has happened.
That's the body.
It may be in solution, but it's still a body.
So the jury plays no part at all in the legal system. It’s all based on the lawyers’ competence or in-. Juries are just as easily incompetent, but never as accountable. I’m sure Einstein would have had trouble teaching relativity to two-year olds or nonphysicists; but the fault wouldn’t be his competence.
No confession, no physical evidence of a malicious death. You cannot prove the death was not an accident.********
My understanding is she was also acquitted of aggravated manslaughter which does not require malice or forethought. Negligence on her (Casey’s) part would be all that is required.
Having said that, it sounds as if the police, prosecutors and judge with his lack of control really stunk this case up.
and so here we are, over a hundred responses and it has run its course.
Much like the internet in general, aka has been around over two years and things have just shifted into stupid; the coming potential election is already old news; the t-potty is not exciting anymore...let’s just make believe everything is hunky do-re-me again....sooner or later another pseudo-leader will show up and fix everything again, right?
Wrong!
How is it we're now around 120 replies when the best response was the first one? Right on, T-c. I don't think Ben Shapiro, regardless his child prodigy academic prowess and law degree, has the experience in life to understand the importance of the jury system. It may be a flawed system in many ways but it certainly surpasses the alternative.
This was part of the national high school debate question back in the early '70s when I was in HS debate. There have been few substantive changes in the interim and society has not yet collapsed because of it. I doubt the Anthony case will bring any new changes and Shapiro fails to convince me of any need for change.
I've always taken issue with the statement that "It is better to acquit one hundred guilty people, than it is to convict one innocent person."
Let me show you my proof:
So, as you can see, it is WORSE to acquit one hundred guilty people, than it is to convict one innocent person. It is, however, BETTER to acquit thirty-seven point nine five three, guilty people, than it is to convict one innocent person.
I'm a big proponant of the coin-toss system.
“Nazi war criminals were hung based on circumstantial evidence”
Which was far greater then the evidence in the Anthony case.
I've only followed the case peripherally, but my $0.02? Guilty.
Also, I'd not be remotely surprised if someone takes care of Ms. Anthony a little later on, after things quiet down a bit. She'll just quietly drop out of sight. No great loss.
That is also my unsupported opinion ... but that's different from ruling on the presented evidence. I don't know what I would have done on the jury, because I haven't paid enough attention.
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand a word of that.
And if you’ll excuse me, I have several sons trying to murder one another. Something to do with dinosaurs. Film at 11:00 ...
I was just listening to Judge Napolitano on Fox. He stated that prosecutors usually go for as much as possible, since they are elected in FL, and the populace likes that. He said that it would have been better for them to make their top count aggravated manslaughter, so now she will probably walk tomorrow.
I don’t know about confusion. Maybe these jurors who were sequestered for two months and probably irritated by now were annoyed by the fact that the charges didn’t warrant a capital murder case since there was only circumstantial evidence.
Not sure that’s a good comparison. If I recall correctly, there were witnesses to the event and he was taken into custody immediately.
I have to wonder what Governor Palin would think about the verdict, and the whole ‘only the dumb ones serve on juries’ meme, since she’s currently on jury duty.
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