Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Casey Anthony

What's your take on the verdict? Do you agree or disagree?

I DISAGREE!!

I guess in hindsight I should have made this poll 1 question, with those three options as the answers. My bad!

I haven't got the faintest idea about any of these questions. I suspect that if I read up on the case in more detail than a quick look at the Wikipedia article I will still not have a much better idea, because press coverage is very different from what the jury sees and hears.

The jury has reached a decision - let it rest.

It just sucks to see injustice - this is the OJ trial all over again. Guilty Guilty Guilty but reasonable doubt gets thrown in there and blows the whole case. She should write a book like OJ, "If I Did It, This is How I'd Do It". At least let everyone know how she killed her daughter now that she can't get punished for it.

She'll be making millions off her daughter's death in the next month. Disgusting.

So you're opposed to the concepts of "innocent until proven guilty," due process, etc.?

This whole situation just makes me sick to my stomach. I've followed this story for quite sometime. I see no way in which she is not guilty either of murder or least to being a heartless horrible excuse of a mother who didn't care in the least when her baby "went missing", didn't report it to the police and went out partying instead. Sick, sick, sick.

The jury seem to be saying she isn't a murderer.

Actually, Marcus, there were several quotes from the jurors saying they felt she was guilty but has no real proof.

If you read up at all about this story, I would find it hard to believe that anyone would feel she is innocent.

Please be careful. In the American justice system, a trial is not about guilt or innocence. It's about proving the guilt of the defendant. From what I've read and heard, I believe that Casey is probably responsible for her daughter's death. But the evidence (and this is according to Juror #3, who has spoken to the media) was not sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was guilty.

The jury's verdict is one of "not guilty," not "innocent of the accusation." And this isn't quite OJ all over again. The OJ jury apparently (and no one but the jury members really know) engaged in "jury nullification," which is a legal term for "sure he's guilty but I just don't want to see him pay for his crime." Casey's jury seems to have come to the conclusion that yeah, she's probably guilty, but the prosecution can't prove it. So they basically had no choice but to acquit her.

We can't operate a justice system based on how we feel about a particular defendant. I don't know her, but I don't like her. She's a single mom who seems to have been more interested in her own party life than in being a mom, but that doesn't make her a murderer. She lied to the police on multiple occasions, but that doesn't make her a murderer. She apparently left her little girl's body in a field for months without telling anyone where she was, but that doesn't make her a murderer. It might make her a terrible human being, but still not a murderer.

This is not a defense of Casey Anthony. This is a defense of the American legal system. The outcome of this trial wasn't what many wanted, but as far as I can tell, the system worked as it was intended. The saying that "I'd rather let ten guilty go free than condemn one innocent" applies here.

I think that Terry has summed this up pretty well. Legal systems are supposed to protect everyone, including the person charged with a crime. Just being sure that someone is guilty isn't enough, it has to be proved. This time it wasn't.

One of the main problems was, the prosecution couldn't establish a motive. I mean the motive of, 'She was a young mother who wanted her partying lifestyle and Caylee got in the way', just doesn't fly. Her ex-fiancee made a good point when he said that she had that lifestyle before Caylee died. She lived with her parents, didn't work, they paid for everything and she went out partying all the time. Caylee didn't change any of that.

I'm not saying that there wasn't reasonable doubt on premeditated murder but to acquit her of ALL the charges except for lying is not true to our justice system at all. To me, there was sufficient evidence to charge her with at least aggravated child abuse - she was the last person to see Caylee alive, there was evidence of a dead body in the trunk of her car, she abandoned her car, and she lied about where she was for a month. No brainer in my opinion.

But you do have to consider that you are getting to judge this case from evidence collected solely from those bastions of factual integrity - the news media.

The jury, on the other hand, has studied the evidence and that may be a completely different set of facts to those paraded by a salacious media, prone to inflated claims and distortions in order to make their stories more exciting.

I've watched many a true crimes case documentary on TV - mostly US cases - and have often sat slack-jawed and open-mouthed that this woman or that was found guilty of murder on what seems to be the most ridiculous and flimsy of evidence. And then I go research the case on the net and find that the facts are very different from those presented by a show that sets out from the start with a bias to present the case a certain way and chooses the facts and puts a slant on them to suit that bias while ignoring the rest.

So we do have to consider that the jury is the best placed to hear ALL of the story, ALL of the facts and that the story we get is distorted by media bias and media agendas.

Having said that, there's no accounting for the occasional dumb stupid jury now and then. Or even a biased or lazy one. Juries aren't perfect.

LabRat

True. It is entirely possible that the jury had inside info that the media didn't elaborate upon. However, this case was televised live every day and I saw much of it with basically just a camera in the court room, watching the testimonies same as the jury - I watched the closing arguments, etc. There were always media correspondents making their commentaries after the fact but I feel as though the evidence in the case was plainly televised for all of America to see...

I think this week has portrayed the difference in how a person can turn out as an adult. First we have Casey who is totally selfish and self-centered. She (whether she killed her daughter or not) did not seem to even give her missing and then dead child much more than a passing thought. The second adult we saw on television was Jaycee who was kidnapped as an 11 year old and was not rescued until she was almost 30. She had unspeakable things happen to her and gave birth twice to her kidnapper's children. She is a loving mother and refuses to live with the hate that would be normal for anyone who lived as she has lived. Jaycee's mother's biggest regret was that she has forgotten to kiss her that morning before she left for work. The difference in the two young ladies, their parents reactions, and the outcome is night-and-day. Wish we could can the second reaction and ban the first.

Pat

All very valid points. The general concensus here is that she might have done the crime, but we can't blame the American justice system for the conviction... and I can see where that's coming from. In my opinion, she is guilty. If not of murder, then of negligence and possible abandonment. I do not believe that there is much that was withheld from the public about the case. But I was really glad to see LabRat state this:
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! It's very easy to lose track of that fact. I once had a teacher a while back who explained that the American jusitce system was no longer "innocent until proven guilty" but rather "innocent until proven guilty unless tried by the media," in which case, it's the reverse. Regardless of whether she was guilty or not, the media (particularly through the tv medium) discusses it and re-discusses it until what was just speculation is turned into common knowledge (or acceptance thereof). Not to mention that there is no such thing as an unbiased news carrier. JMHO