This whole thread is about laws which didn’t exist or weren’t applied to Casey Anthony. No need to be a jerk about it.
So what?
My original point stands. Misprison of felony is applied in two cases 1) to extend the reach of corruption indictments to persons acting under color of law when they cannot otherwise be indicted or 2) as a threat against witnesses who refuse to come forward. Both uses imply either a conviction for the crime against which misprison has been found, or a credible threat that a conviction can be obtained without the witness's cooperation, which will then put the witness in some jeopardy of legal action. Misprison cannot be applied against the person who actually committed the crime. It also can't be applied when there is no crime to begin with.
No prosecutor would have brought a case of misprison against Casey Anthony, and no prosecutor will bring one now. There is no circumstance in which misprison could be used here, and simply quoting the definition of the statute doesn't imply one. Casey did not misprison the felony of kidnapping, because no kidnapping occurred. The prosecutor could not threaten her with misprison knowing full well that the kidnapping claim was a lie. Had he threatened Casey with misprison for kidnapping, she and her lawyer would have laughed in his face, knowing quite well that since the felony had not occurred, he would never be able to get a conviction for the active concealment of it.
What is striking to me is how many conservatives in general, and on this thread in particular -- including Mr. Chapman himself in the original blog -- rail against the dumbing down of America, yet apparently believe that wherever else in America [science, economics, etc.] making people stupid might have serious consequences, the legal system is somehow magically immune.
It's not. Stupid people make stupid jurors.
A jury that could not understand reasonable doubt is not going to understand misprison of felony -- even had a kidnapping actually occurred. And to the original point: a jury which cannot understand that the failure to report a two year-old missing is endangerment apparently needs to be smacked right in the face with a brand new law: "Hey YOU STUPID SH!THEADS! two year olds cannot survive more than a day [two at the most] on their own, even in a highly protected environment. A mother who allows a Toddler to wander around planet earth for a month without reporting it IS A NEGLIGENT MOTHER DO. YOU. TWELVE. DUMB. ASSES. GET. THE. PICTURE. NOW?!
If conservatives want to pretend that the negligence count with which Casey Anthony was charged -- and found innocent -- was a correct finding, then, fine. We will have to apparently spell out in gory detail every jot, tiddel, and flyspeck of the law to the poor victims of our public school system who man our juries. It might be true that intelligent, well educated people don't need "new" laws. But these twelve, incredibly dimwitted jackasses (and their supporters in the media and on FR) apparently do, and sadly, that means that people with intelligence and common sense will have a swarm of "new" laws. But understand this: those "new" laws will not empower the expansive state one iota more, those "new" laws will simply be necessary to fill in the intelligence and common sense gap left in the perfectly good "old" laws by our educational system, and by a voir dire process that is designed to empanel the twelve dullest knives in the drawer.