CASEY ANTHONY: what do you think will happen.

[Admiral Buzzkill]

That sound you just heard wasn't leftover fireworks; it was Nancy Grace's head exploding.

It's too much to hope for that much good to come of this.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

The problem is what they call the CSI Effect. Jurors expect MASSIVE amounts of DNA and other high tech proof.

If a child disappears, the mother parties for 31 days, and then when the stench of death in the car is enough to make the grandparents call the police and the mother LIES to the police (and lies for TWO YEARS about a so called non existant nanny)....don't tell me there isnt enough to believe. I don't need DNA to use my reason. She killed that child and got away with it.

Maybe she did kill her daughter and get away with it, but the prosecution failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

I still think she's guilty, but you know what? I wasn't on that jury and I didn't have to make that determination. I didn't have to deliberate it, examine all the evidence and testimony, and take someone's life into my hands, so it's really not my place or anyone else's to judge.

I'd rather we let guilty people walk than send innocent people to death row. Erring on the side of caution and all that.

I agree with every word you wrote.

but I think common sense should play a part as well.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The problem is what they call the CSI Effect. Jurors expect MASSIVE amounts of DNA and other high tech proof.

If a child disappears, the mother parties for 31 days, and then when the stench of death in the car is enough to make the grandparents call the police and the mother LIES to the police (and lies for TWO YEARS about a so called non existant nanny)....don't tell me there isnt enough to believe. I don't need DNA to use my reason. She killed that child and got away with it.

Maybe she did kill her daughter and get away with it, but the prosecution failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

I still think she's guilty, but you know what? I wasn't on that jury and I didn't have to make that determination. I didn't have to deliberate it, examine all the evidence and testimony, and take someone's life into my hands, so it's really not my place or anyone else's to judge.

I'd rather we let guilty people walk than send innocent people to death row. Erring on the side of caution and all that.

I agree with every word you wrote.

but I think common sense should play a part as well.

"Common sense" is a bullshit phrase people spout that really just means "I didn't get my way."

 

[Yeoman Randi]

You know what happens now? The police close the case on little Caylee's death because they know they had the right perpetrator. This is a sad day.

Common sense is a lot more than a bullshit phrase Robert. A whole lot more.

This really is a sad day.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The problem is what they call the CSI Effect. Jurors expect MASSIVE amounts of DNA and other high tech proof.

If a child disappears, the mother parties for 31 days, and then when the stench of death in the car is enough to make the grandparents call the police and the mother LIES to the police (and lies for TWO YEARS about a so called non existant nanny)....don't tell me there isnt enough to believe. I don't need DNA to use my reason. She killed that child and got away with it.

Maybe she did kill her daughter and get away with it, but the prosecution failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

I still think she's guilty, but you know what? I wasn't on that jury and I didn't have to make that determination. I didn't have to deliberate it, examine all the evidence and testimony, and take someone's life into my hands, so it's really not my place or anyone else's to judge.

I'd rather we let guilty people walk than send innocent people to death row. Erring on the side of caution and all that.

I agree with every word you wrote.

but I think common sense should play a part as well.

When "common sense" is not backed by evidence, it's merely prejudice.

I think common sense and a certain amount of good legal judgment unswayed by political considerations would have led the prosecutors at some point to sit down with Anthony's people and try to negotiate second degree murder or manslaughter.

What "common sense" might tell one about this situation is that Casey either killed or was directly responsible for the child's death and tried to hide that. What common sense cannot tell you is exactly what the circumstances were or what Anthony's intent was. For that, you need pretty strong and specific evidence. The prosecution was hanging first degree murder not on the broad pattern of what evidence there was in this case, but on one or two flimsy - yeah, flimsy - bits of information. That evidence could not sustain so serious a charge.

Blame the prosecutors for rolling those dice.

 

[1001001]

bitch should have fried - i hope she gets shanked in prison

I doubt she'll see much, if any, prison time.

I'm surprised they didn't release her immediately. She's already spent three years in jail, much more than the misdemeanor charges will get her.

I still think she's guilty, but what do I know?

 

[bluedana]

No, common sense is valuable in the courtroom. We want jurors to approach each piece of evidence and each argument with their good common sense in determining its value and credibility, but then they have to put all of the evidence and measure it against the standard of "did the prosecution prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt?"

 

[Yeoman Randi]

Maybe she did kill her daughter and get away with it, but the prosecution failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

I still think she's guilty, but you know what? I wasn't on that jury and I didn't have to make that determination. I didn't have to deliberate it, examine all the evidence and testimony, and take someone's life into my hands, so it's really not my place or anyone else's to judge.

I'd rather we let guilty people walk than send innocent people to death row. Erring on the side of caution and all that.

I agree with every word you wrote.

but I think common sense should play a part as well.

When "common sense" is not backed by evidence, it's merely prejudice.

I think common sense and a certain amount of good judgment would have led the prosecutors at some point to sit down with Anthony's people and try to negotiate second degree murder or manslaughter.

What "common sense" might tell one about this situation is that Casey either killed or was directly responsible for the child's death and tried to hide that. What common sense cannot tell you is exactly what the circumstances were or what Anthony's intent was. For that, you need pretty strong and specific evidence. The prosecution was hanging first degree murder not on the broad pattern of what evidence there was in this case, but on one or two flimsy - yeah, flimsy - pieces. That evidence could not sustain so serious a charge.

Yeah, but there WAS LOTS of evidence. That's what i meant by the CSI Effect. People have come to expect DNA and evidence like that.

I watched the entire trial. I didnt go in thinking she was guilty. I saw and heard what they had. She is guilty.
It's not prejudice to believe she is guilty, not if you hear the evidence and USE common sense.

GAH. I have to go out and get out of the house. Im beyond mortified.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, but what seems to be happening here is, everyone demanded a guilty verdict, so now that there isn't one it must be because the jury fucked up, didn't have any "common sense," or what-have-you. That isn't common sense, it's just mob mentality.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yeah, but there WAS LOTS of evidence. That's what i meant by the CSI Effect. People have come to expect DNA and evidence like that.

I disagree - I followed this pretty closely, and there was not lots of good evidence speaking to either intent or the circumstances of death. The whole chloroform thing was particularly fragile and easily challenged, and the coroner not only couldn't assign a cause of death, she couldn't offer strong support for her conclusion of homicide - basically, "I based that on what people told me."

Most of the "evidence" in this case was that Casey Anthony is a lying and unsympathetic nutjob who interfered with the investigation because she was probably hiding something. In the end, that's what she was convicted of.

The propensity of a good prosecutor (or defense attorney) to construct a storyline for the jury - the defendant did this because she must have done that, and any sensible person would have to conclude that this bit of evidence was found under these circumstances because the defendant did thus-and-so - is part of their tool set but it still relies on having the evidence to construct that tale around. These folks didn't have it.

 

[sidious618]

Yeah, but what seems to be happening here is, everyone demanded a guilty verdict, so now that there isn't one it must be because the jury fucked up, didn't have any "common sense," or what-have-you. That isn't common sense, it's just mob mentality.

I didn't want her to get first degree murder because I don't think giving her the death penalty is justice at all. If she did kill her own child then she's seriously messed up in the head. This is someone who needs to have psychiatric help for the rest of her life to figure out what the fuck went wrong. In that sense we could learn from it.

 

[Neroon]

Yeah, but what seems to be happening here is, everyone demanded a guilty verdict, so now that there isn't one it must be because the jury fucked up, didn't have any "common sense," or what-have-you. That isn't common sense, it's just mob mentality.

That may be the case here, but it doesn't discount the value of common sense overall.

The verdict surprised me given what i had heard up to this point. However, after reading several news sites I'm inclined to think that it was a case of prosecution mistakes. There just didn't seem to be enough evidence pointing directly to Casey Anthony herself.

ETA: one thing that really unsettles me is that I was convinced she was guilty - and Casey may still be that - but after hearing and reading everything so far I can't see how that was proved. Conclusion: I was sucked in by the emotion swirling around this and by being a parent myself.

 

[DarthTom]

I didn't want her to get first degree murder because I don't think giving her the death penalty is justice at all. If she did kill her own child then she's seriously messed up in the head. This is someone who needs to have psychiatric help for the rest of her life to figure out what the fuck went wrong. In that sense we could learn from it.

There seems to be statistically a definite disconnect with how this is viewed by juries:

Slate

Study by Dr. Phillip Resnick, the "father" of maternal filicide (the murder of a child by a parent), found that while mothers convicted of murdering their children were hospitalized 68 percent of the time and imprisoned 27 percent of the time, fathers convicted of killing their children were sentenced to prison or executed 72 percent of the time and hospitalized only 14 percent of the time.

and

The problem with the "illness" theory is that it only goes partway toward explaining why women kill their babies. Illness may explain how some women eventually snap and behave violently. But it doesn't begin to explain why they direct this madness so disproportionately toward their own offspring. Even taking into account that some small fraction of the mental illnesses associated with maternal filicide—most notably postpartum depression—are triggered by the births themselves, the illness theory doesn't explain why mothers suffering from other mental illnesses, or who aren't ill at all, act out with their own children rather than strangers. The illness theory doesn't explain why we don't consider fathers who kill their children to be sick. Pulling murderous mothers out of the field of ordinary criminology and viewing them as fundamentally different raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps murderous mothers are no crazier than fathers. Perhaps murderous fathers are even crazier than mothers. Either way, the failure to view these crimes as morally or legally equivalent reflects a more central legal truth: We still view children as the mother's property. Since destroying one's own property is considered crazy while destroying someone else's property is criminal, women who murder their own children are sent to hospitals, whereas their husbands are criminals, who go to jail or the electric chair.

 

[sidious618]

I'm not sure if that disagrees with anything that I said otherwise than the very end with the odd conclusion about the child being the mother's property. Nothing like that is in my previous post.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

People were focusing on the mistakes and poor judgment of the defense. These people were nobody's "dream team." No doubt if there had been appeals there would probably have been new lawyers who'd have tried to capitalize on the foolishness of Baez and the others.

But saying that "the defense didn't present evidence that Casey was molested by her father or that Kaylee drowned" misses the point that they weren't required to prove anything in order to win acquittal.

The prosecution, OTOH, charged very specifically that Casey Anthony killed her child by drugging her with chloroform and suffocating her with duct tape.

And there were just a couple of problems with that: the prosecution couldn't prove that the child was suffocated with duct tape or that chloroform was involved. Or that Casey Anthony was present at the death.

Other than that, a masterful effort by the state.

 

[DarthTom]

I'm not sure if that disagrees with anything that I said otherwise than the very end with the odd conclusion about the child being the mother's property. Nothing like that is in my previous post.

Unless I misunderstood, your conclusion was that women who kill their children are mentally ill. Do you think that both mothers and fathers who do so are equally mentally ill?

If so, my apologies.

Regardless, the way that in society [juries] views homicide of one's children is disproportionally placed on men over women.

 

[DarthTom]

And there were just a couple of problems with that: the prosecution couldn't prove that the child was suffocated with duct tape or that chloroform was involved. Or that Casey Anthony was present at the death.

Other than that, a masterful effort by the state.

I agree, from what I understand there was enough 'reasonable doubt' to think the child died in the pool by herself.

That still fails to explain why the jury didn't at least hold her accountable to manslaughter.

Someone who fled the scene of a car accident would have been held more criminally liable then she has been for the death of her child.

 

[sidious618]

I'm not sure if that disagrees with anything that I said otherwise than the very end with the odd conclusion about the child being the mother's property. Nothing like that is in my previous post.

Unless I misunderstood, your conclusion was that women who kill their children are mentally ill. Do you think that both mothers and fathers who do so are equally mentally ill?

Yeah.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Statistically, men are more likely to use lethal violence than women in general - so a guy who kills someone isn't nearly as far off baseline "normal" as a woman who does.

 

[sidious618]

Statistically, men are more likely to use lethal violence than women in general - so a guy who kills someone isn't nearly as far off baseline "normal" as a woman who does.

Why do statistics hate men?