There is no reasonable explanation for the mother’s behavior once her daughter “went missing”. The mother began telling people a lie ... then more lies ... then more. She made up a story about a nanny who was watching her daughter. She said the nanny took the daughter out of town. She said the nanny had a car wreck and was in the hospital so her daughter had to stay out of town.
When the mother’s family began asking where the daughter was, she denied her daughter was missing.
To pretend this lady did not cause her daughter’s death is shameful.
If your child walked from the kitchen into the living room with cookie crumbs on his mouth and all over his hands and you then noticed the lid was off the cookie jar and several cookies were missing, I’m assuming you couldn’t chastise your child because there was only circumstantial evidence he ate the cookies.
Let us all mourn the death of common sense.
“There is no reasonable explanation for the mother’s behavior once her daughter “went missing”. The mother began telling people a lie ... then more lies ... then more. She made up a story about a nanny who was watching her daughter. She said the nanny took the daughter out of town. She said the nanny had a car wreck and was in the hospital so her daughter had to stay out of town.When the mother’s family began asking where the daughter was, she denied her daughter was missing. To pretend this lady did not cause her daughter’s death is shameful.”
There’s no doubt she was lying. She was convicted of those charges. I also personally believe that she killed her daughter. But ultimately there was not enough proof presented to the jury to show BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that she killed her daughter. It’s not an issue of how shady it seemed or even how likely it was she killed her daughter but rather whether there are any other reasonable explainations that do not involve her being the murderer. Given the evidence presented the jury believed, correctly so given the limited amount of evidence presented, that this standard could not be met. It’s beyond unfortunate that a likely guilty woman got off with her crimes but that is just how our system works in trying to simultaneously protect the innocent. It’s not pretending whether she killed or didn’t kill her daughter. Ultimately this issue is secondary to one and one only that governs the case: has the prosecution proven beyond any reasonable doubt and based solely on the evidence presented to the jury that she killed her daughter. The answer is no, the prosecution failed to meet this high burden.
“If your child walked from the kitchen into the living room with cookie crumbs on his mouth and all over his hands and you then noticed the lid was off the cookie jar and several cookies were missing, I’m assuming you couldn’t chastise your child because there was only circumstantial evidence he ate the cookies.”
It’s not just a circumstantial v. direct issue. It’s entirely possible to support convictions primarily or even solely on circumstantial evidence (a lot of courts will refuse to issue death penalty over it though. Instead it is a quality of evidence issue. The circumstantial evidence presented, by itself, did not show a case with 95-99% certainty that she killed her daughter and nothing else could explain it. Again the circumstantial evidence is helpful and, if it was valuable enough, could play a critical role in a case like this. However, ultimately it failed to address all holes in the prosecution’s theory. The fact the defense’s theory was utter rubbish is irrelevant as the burden lies with the prosecution not the defense.
“Let us all mourn the death of common sense.”
No it’s not a death of common sense. In many ways that died many years ago in other areas. Instead a case like this reminds us all that while we try to be as just as possible there remain holes in our legal system. For that matter there remain holes in all human made systems. Ultimately there is only one perfect arbiter of justice and Casey will have to face her crimes before Him. Before then our mortal court systems, as a cost of protecting the innocent from wrongful accusal and imprisonment, have let her off the hook for the major charges because they could not be sufficiently proven by the prosecution.