the casey anthony case

[billy]

do you think she should have been found guilty?;
for those who haven't heard of her she was accused of killing her child and hiding the body.

Caylee Marie Anthony (August 9, 2005 – c. June 16, 2008)[1] was a child from Orlando, Florida, whose disappearance in June 2008 attracted national media attention. Caylee's skeletal remains were discovered December 11, 2008, six months after she was reported missing by her grandmother, Cindy Anthony.[2] Her mother, Casey Anthony, decided not to report her daughter missing, and was indicted on charges of felony murder, though she continued to maintain her innocence throughout her trial. Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter, but guilty of providing false information to a law enforcement officer.

source;

the verdict came as a bigger shock than that of the O J simpson trial if the press are to be belived.
me and addy were watching the news when we found out and we both said an audible wtf reply

i think that justice can be cruel sometimes, this for me is one of those times. she should have been found guilty.

[abu nuwas]

I have no idea. The weight of evidence against the mother seems strong, yet seems to me to fall short of linking her directly to this poor child's death. I think UK courts would have found a conviction unsafe. A civil case might be different, where one only has to contemplate the balance of probabilities. In any event, there was plainly masses of evidence presented to the jury, who must therefore have been in a good position to reach a conclusion.

[billy]

the main reason for not guilty charges is reasonable doubt.

in this case i think the jury used the premise of "any" doubt, which isn't what the law says.
a person can be found guilty on circumstantial evidence, which is what it would have been for the actual killing.
for me, it was the way she acted, the things she said, the fact they refused to put her on the stand. that she had a dream team.
i just think there's something wrong with the outcome.

[abu nuwas]

You may well be right, and Justice would demand that she be convicted. But Justice resides in Heaven, and pending our translation there, we have to content ourselves with the by-ways of Common Law, and the rules of evidence. According to the Wiki article, two lawyers in succession offered excuses to withdraw, which quite often is a sign that they simply do not believe the story they are being given, and feel unable therefore to give sound advice. I must have missed the bit about the 'dream team'.

I was vaguely uneasy at the point where the father and some guy at the compound? both thought that the boot of the car smelt of decomposing body. It may well have stunk; but how many people could know that smell? Circumstantial evidence can be used to convict, but it must be very compelling. Here, it seems to say that the child was killled, but leaves open the possibility that others did the deed, perhaps making deliberate and successful attempts to frame this woman.

It is very sad, and I'm afraid it passes my understanding why anyone would want to kill a child, unless that person were seriously deranged. I find I have to force myself to read about, or listen to, such stuff, as a matter of duty somehow.

[billy]

i suppose it smells the same as any rotting meat.
there have been cases where a person has been convicted without there being a body found. but that's for another thread.
the thing with the parents is that they continually asked about the kid and were continually told the baby sitter had run off with it, some one fictitious or not she tried to frame with kidnapping.
even the tapes show the parents asking her about it.
i do agree hat no one saw the child being drowned. she herself did however state at one point that it was an accident and that her father witnessed it, something he denied, from what i saw of the meetings between parents and daughter in prison i'd have to say she was lying.

it would have been more believable if she'd have said she came to the pool, saw the child dead and panicked.

i have to say i hate seeing such stuff as well.

[addy]

The woman is a pathological liar... yeah, that's not enough to convict her of murder, but for me it painted enough of a disturbing pattern that it's more than suspicious. Even before her daughter disappeared, Anthony lied constantly to cover up her flagrant negligence (would tell family and friends that her daughter was with some fictitious "nanny" while she was out partying, most likely leaving the girl unsupervised and uncared for). I think even the jury recognizes she's a bullshitter, and doesn't for one second buy her accidental-drowning-and-my-dad-is-an-accomplice defense. From the videos of the family during the investigation, it seems pretty clear she was giving them the runaround just like she was doing the police. The jury absolved not because of the bullshit defense, but because the prosecution for them was unable to paint a complete enough picture of what happened with the facts (personally I don't agree).

It's very possible she committed first degree murder, and got away with it. But assuming the death was an accident, her pattern of negligence as a parent means such an accident was not a fluke but inevitable, and that should at least earn her a lesser conviction, imo (heck, I can dream, can't I?)

[Touchstone]

Why the fuck have a justice system if you're going to second guess everything?

The way I figure it, the jurors sat through 5 weeks of trial, having all the evidence available presented to them personally by the prosecutors, and examined by the defence. If, at the end of that time, they felt the prosecutors had failed to convince them of guilt then that's more likely to be an accurate assessment than any judgement any of us can make based on the few snippets of information that have been carefully selected and crafted to grab our attention by newspapers/internet news sites with advertisers to keep happy.

But perhaps we should just let the police publicly execute whomever they tell us did it? It would be a lot faster and more entertaining, and it would give us all a satisfied feeling which allowing people to actually review the evidence sometimes defeats. And, hey, it's not like the police ever make any mistakes.

[billy]

because it's a discussion and people voice their opinions, the jury system isn't some great truth that should never be judged are spoken out against. the judicial system of trial by jury sometimes gets it flagrantly wrong, as attested to by the oj case and numerous other cases, we also have cases where innocent men were jailed and then released. i'd have personally preferred her to have been found guilty of 2nd degree murder or wilful homicide at least. sadly the police when for the 1st degree only.