This jury, God himself must be baffled how, actually could not understand how lying with material specificity is evidence of wrongdoing! They actually could not understand how, when the purported motive for killing your daughter is that your various and sundry boyfriends want her dead, that partying non-stop with your gaggle of screwbuddies while your daughter continues to be missing actually reinforces the evidence of the motive.
Instead, they listened to nonsensical arguments like "She's a liar, but that doesn't make her a murderer." Ummm, DUH: when the lies impinge directly on the question of your guilt, yes, it DOES reinforce the evidence that you're a murderer. "She's a slut, but that doesn't make her a murderer," Again, DUH: It does when you've been told by the man you're sleeping with tonight that having a daughter makes you a less attractive slut than you would otherwise be.
Why do we have the charge of aggravated manslaughter? Or the charge of negligent homicide? These laws did not exist throughout all antiquity. They came into existence because at some point juries could not find everyone guilty of capital murder, so finer gradations in the law were needed.
The reductio ad absurdum of Chapman's thesis is to have no laws at all, because good people don't break them, and criminals don't obey them. This is nonsense pretending to be reasoning.
All of our justice occurs after the fact, it is wrong not report a child missing for a month, so there should be a way to punish someone who has failed to do so. If a jury cannot see that this was evidence of negligence per se (it is to all but twelve complete morons) then unfortunately, we must have laws that spell out quite clearly what constitutes negligence, and why.
Casey's Laws are a sad commentary on the state of reasoning among our population. Unfortunately, as this case and the silliness of posters commenting on this thread have made clear, they're also necessary.
Nothing to tie Casey to anything.
1. No cause of death
2. No location of death
3. No believable motive
4. No believable physical evidence
5. No murder weapon
6. Dubious murder finding by medical examiner with no cause of death
7. PHONY prosecution testing
This case was a NO BRAINER! And I mean the prosecutors had no brains. They had NO CASE. Even after keeping her in jail for 3 years trying to “fabricate” a case, they failed.
I have actual “PROOF” of my position. A jury verdict of NOT guilty. Hardly “innocent”, but definitely not guilty.
Excellent analysis. Thanks! I so agree.
“This jury, God himself must be baffled how, actually could not understand how lying with material specificity is evidence of wrongdoing! They actually could not understand how, when the purported motive for killing your daughter is that your various and sundry boyfriends want her dead, that partying non-stop with your gaggle of screwbuddies while your daughter continues to be missing actually reinforces the evidence of the motive.”
You make an excellent point. The cumulative weight of the evidence was very strong. Her lies were powerful evidence against her. She told so many lies for a sustained period. Her words, actions, reported death smell, condition of the body, and chloroform (search and trace evidence) together were overwhelming evidence of her guilt.
The suspicion on her father was a side show. Even if he was involved, it did not diminish her guilt. However, I saw no evidence that he had any involvement with the death.
Weighing evidence is difficult human judgment. This case lacked the compelling physical evidence linking her to the death so the jury needed to carefully weigh the other evidence. The jury was swayed by hypothetical arguments put forth by the defense to diffuse some pieces of evidence and disregard other strong evidence. The jury also fell prey to the argument about general uncertainties in criminal cases. There are almost always unexplained elements in any crime. The prosecution can never explain all elements of a crime scene.