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.
There is a famous case in British jurisprudence wherein a man killed someone and then dumped the body in a tank of hydrochloric acid. The body fully disintegrated and the prosecution could not prove the cause of death. They still won a conviction on other, circumstantial evidence.
Yes, I did, actually. However, his premise is that he knows how this trial should have turned out, and therefore the “revamped” jury system would be one that called every case they way he feels it should be called.
Just change the peers part. She got a trial by her peers - a bunch of a-holes. The jury should be a random pool of intelligent people.
I also agree with the jury verdict. However, I also believe that Casey killed Caylee. The prosecution and police did not provide justice for little, innocent Caylee!!! IMHO, the real father of Caylee should have been exposed and identified, if only to probe into the depth of Casey and her weird and evil mantra. Sloppy police work and investigation actually proved nothing. Personally, I would have left no stone unturned in pursuit of this evil child murderer. America is now a third world country, with no justice fort those who most need our protection and safety.
The prosecution was just as dumb as the jury.
Given what I've seen on this Casey Anthony trial, no.
Abolish no. Reform Yes. This system is irrecovacally broken because the legal system has massively altered the system. The defense introduced nonsensical alternative scenarios that simply were not possible based on the facts. The 12 imbeciles accepted these scenarios in the opening stages and ignored the actual facts. Juries are simply now filled with people too stupid to allow simple logic to rule the day. I like the previous posters idea that jurors are approved and randomly placed on specific cases. This would truly be a jury of peers, and not allow the jury shaping we see today. No one with a brain would agree to be on a case like this leaving their jobs and families for 2 months. Only attention whores and losers would agree.
While the jury system may not be perfect, it is far beyond any alternative system.
Hehe love the dripping sarcasm.
Based on the ‘learned’ courts’ most recent job-lot of rulings including the nonsensical Michigan discrimination case, we are much better off with juries than with judges.
One blade mark, one bullet shattered bone, evidence of blunt force trauma, and you can establish cause of death, even from a skeleton.
Confessions help.
No confession, no physical evidence of a malicious death. You cannot prove the death was not an accident.
There is the 'reason' in the reasonable doubt.
In the absence of proof, the prosecution should have tried the case on a lesser charge, not one which requires the proof of malice and forethought, when it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the child was murdered and hers was not an accidental death.
One thing the Founders also believed: that each and every one of us would some day stand before our Creator and answer for our sins. With that in mind, that no innocents be convicted, there will be those who have gone free even though they were guilty.
I have had a judge tell me (with one of his eyes looking in one direction and the other eye looking in another) that I 'looked guilty' (I wasn't!), and fine me. Until you have gone through that sort of crap, you have no idea how wonderful the jury system can be. Otherwise, we would all be subject to the arbitrary and capricious nature of whomever sits on the bench, and our lives might depend on that.
“In our gut” knowledge means and should count for nothing. Means, opportunity, and motive, however, were proved beyond a reasonable doubt. A murder was committed, and that murder benefited only one person. This jury granted Casey a thirteenth- trimester abortion.
I’m trying to break the habit of “all sarcasm, all the time,” but I keep forgetting. Maybe I could start with once a day, and try to work up from there ...
That’s an intriguing idea- the whole practice of selecting juries as it is now seems fraught with potential for trouble.
The rights of the accused should always be held sacred- somehow it seems though, they’ve superceded the rights of the one wronged.
I disagree.
Not yet, but she will probably be there tomorrow afternoon
How do you know a murder was committed?
That is a famous case because the perpetrator believed that he could not be found guilty because there was no corpus delecti - he believed that this latin tag meant 'if there is no body then there is no way to be convicted of murder'.
But of course corpus delecti means 'the material evidence of a crime'. The dissolved remains of the acid-bath victim were enough to prove that someone had been dissolved in acid, and so the acid-bath murderer was put away.
I don't understand why they didn't just charge her with improperly disposing of a body, which would have been easy to prove and didn't require cause of death.
It’s not necessary to criticize the author. He is just giving his opinion, to which he is entitled
Examples of judicial abuse and excess are so common that I can't believe anyone wants to give judges any more power.
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