Casey Anthony - NOT Guilty!

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

^^^  Maybe the reason the defense went with not guilty ilo insanity, and let the trial play out and show bouts of really insane actions. 

Maybe I'm one of the few that really don't think that she killed the child - directly, but a lot of indirect actions and non-actions actually led to the death.

The cover up is usually worse than the crime and that rings true in this case as well.

[avonjax]

I agree with WSRN, I think her actions did lead to her child's death, but I'm not so sure she actually killed her. Someday we may know the truth but the jury, who are now being demonized, did their job. Whatever the evidence and the facts they were presented, was not enough to send her to prison, or worse, death row. Not to minimize the tragedy of the death of a child, but if the victim had been an adult, the emotions of the public would not have been as hot. Most of the reactions have been scathing and based strictly on emotions. Because a child died, onlookers have thrown out their ability to reason on why this conclusion was met. I too was shocked at first, but soon realized the case against her was just not strong enough to convict. I truly hope it was a tragic accident and a pathological liar was trying to cover up her neglect.

[Jaxson]

Let's not forget that this story would have been a dead issue three years ago if not for the whole "Missing white girl" component to the story.  Yes, Cayleigh was a child, but the meme nonetheless whips up the media and public into a frenzy that makes a fair trial almost impossible....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6jiblDQpYs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/missing-white-girl-syndro_b_51632.html
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2006/03/diagnosing-missing-white-woman.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/writing-tools/92749/the-lure-and-peril-of-missing-white-girl-syndrome/

[duvaldude08]

If she is innocent WHY did she keep lying about everything? All I have to say is you reap what you sow. OJ didnt go to jail for his murder's, but he eventually still ended up in jail anyway. If this woman is guilty (which I really think she is), she is not going to have a easy life at all.

Well I think it's pretty clear the girl has mental problems. During the trial, it came out that she lied to her friends and family for years before the kid ever disappeared. She would make up fake boyfriends, fake best friends, fake impressive-sounding jobs, fake vacations, etc., out of thin air, and run around telling everybody about them like it really happened. Maybe to trying impress people, I guess, or to make it seem like her life was better than it really was. Or maybe she's just a delusional person, god knows there are enough out there. But she'd been doing that kind of nonsense most of her life, it wasn't some recent thing. She did the same things with the detective that she'd been doing for years. And got busted for it, since she was (rightly) convicted of lying to an LEO. I'm just not sure you can impute a murder based on lies to a detective made by someone who's been a pathological liar for years before the murder.

Thats what makes this even more bizarre. I just want scream, "What the hell really happen!!???!!!!!!!!!"

[Ocklawaha]

Let's not forget that this story would have been a dead issue three years ago if not for the whole "Missing white girl" component to the story.  Yes, Cayleigh was a child, but the meme nonetheless whips up the media and public into a frenzy that makes a fair trial almost impossible....

Sounds pretty racist to me Jaxson. My wife was with OKC Victim Services through OSU University, and I'm here to tell you it didn't matter one wit who's missing baby it was, she poured herself into every case. She also has met her share of people that think because the cop was this color, or the victim that color, the resources were not used, a notion that is completely false. I've known a lot of Jacksonville, Palatka, St. Augustine, police and sheriff's deputies and it's amazing how the departments are completely multiracial. For your premise to be true, then dozens of Black, Hispanic or 'others' on these departments must have ignored both their work and their passions.

Frankly the only department in either Oklahoma or Florida that I've known to be racially corrupt is the one in Orlando.

OCKLAWAHA

[Jaxson]

Let's not forget that this story would have been a dead issue three years ago if not for the whole "Missing white girl" component to the story.  Yes, Cayleigh was a child, but the meme nonetheless whips up the media and public into a frenzy that makes a fair trial almost impossible....

Sounds pretty racist to me Jaxson. My wife was with OKC Victim Services through OSU University, and I'm here to tell you it didn't matter one wit who's missing baby it was, she poured herself into every case. She also has met her share of people that think because the cop was this color, or the victim that color, the resources were not used, a notion that is completely false. I've known a lot of Jacksonville, Palatka, St. Augustine, police and sheriff's deputies and it's amazing how the departments are completely multiracial. For your premise to be true, then dozens of Black, Hispanic or 'others' on these departments must have ignored both their work and their passions.

Frankly the only department in either Oklahoma or Florida that I've known to be racially corrupt is the one in Orlando.

OCKLAWAHA

Sorry, Ock, but I am not talking about law enforcement!  I am talking about the media and how THEY ignore many deserving cases in favor of stories that they believe will get more ratings.  I would NEVER malign law enforcement in such a way.   

Please click on one of the links that I included with my post for a better picture of what I am saying...

[Jaxson]

Let's not forget that this story would have been a dead issue three years ago if not for the whole "Missing white girl" component to the story.  Yes, Cayleigh was a child, but the meme nonetheless whips up the media and public into a frenzy that makes a fair trial almost impossible....

Sounds pretty racist to me Jaxson. My wife was with OKC Victim Services through OSU University, and I'm here to tell you it didn't matter one wit who's missing baby it was, she poured herself into every case. She also has met her share of people that think because the cop was this color, or the victim that color, the resources were not used, a notion that is completely false. I've known a lot of Jacksonville, Palatka, St. Augustine, police and sheriff's deputies and it's amazing how the departments are completely multiracial. For your premise to be true, then dozens of Black, Hispanic or 'others' on these departments must have ignored both their work and their passions.

Frankly the only department in either Oklahoma or Florida that I've known to be racially corrupt is the one in Orlando.

OCKLAWAHA

Notice that I never mentioned our LEOs, but the MEDIA. 

[Jaxson]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/08/us-crime-anthony-idUSTRE7620Y720110708

[Timkin]

In any event , I hope this lady can live with what she did.  O wait.. She wasn't proven guilty , so she must not have done it.  About the same level of justice served as with OJ Simpson.  Guess that was a double-suicide, not a murder.

[Jaxson]

In any event , I hope this lady can live with what she did.  O wait.. She wasn't proven guilty , so she must not have done it.  About the same level of justice served as with OJ Simpson.  Guess that was a double-suicide, not a murder.

My mother is a lady.  Your mother was a lady.  Casey Anthony is definitely no lady!!!  Patsy Stone would have made a better mother than Casey! ; )

[Bridges]

In any event , I hope this lady can live with what she did.  O wait.. She wasn't proven guilty , so she must not have done it.  About the same level of justice served as with OJ Simpson.  Guess that was a double-suicide, not a murder.

I keep seeing this comparison to O.J. but it doesn't really hold up.  They were two entirely different cases.  The OJ case was a case of botched investigation, mismanaged evidence, and horrific character problems with witnesses.  The facts were there, and the exact theory of the murder events was presented.  See Marcia Clark's "Without a Doubt".

Anthony's case didn't have the evidence.  It used entirely untested methods (smell) as evidence and they just didn't hold up.  Couple that with an inability of the prosecution to have a covincing theory of how the murder went down, and you just don't have enough for a conviction. 

[ChriswUfGator]

It was even worse with the Anthony trial, the prosecution's theory of the case was outright contradicted by the their own evidence. They claimed the girl was chloroformed, and then their experts on cross and the defense's experts all asknowledged they had done extensive testing for chloroform and residue and found no concentration anywhere that was higher than what exists naturally in the ambient atmosphere. They claimed the body was in the trunk for days in a Florida summer, but somehow there was no evidence of decomposition other than a rotting smell that, as it turned out, probably came from the rotting bag of garbage left in the trunk.

They claimed the stains in the trunk were evidence of decomposition, but under cross the state's expert acknowledged there was no chemical evidence of decomposition in the stains, and no DNA. Then the defense even trotted out the car dealer who said the trunk stains were already there when the Anthonys bought the car. Then on cross examination, it turned out the state's IT expert had screwed up the IP address for the 84 visits to a site on how to make chloroform, and that it was actually myspace.com that had been visited 84 times. Then the mother took the stand to say she had done the search on chloroform, not the daughter, when google autocorrected her search for a similar word. Which I think was a lie. But I doubt the jury gave the defendant's mother's testimony much weight anyway, a defendant's mother testifying on their behalf is about as shocking as the sun rising in the morning, and a whole lot less meaningful.

Then you have only two pieces of physical evidence, the first was the duct-tape, where you had the police detective lying on the stand, trying to say that, well, the duct tape had the same decorative pattern printed on it as the duct tape found at the Anthony home, but that it magically disappeared before he was able to snap a photo of it. Seriously? The duct tape on the body sat out in the Florida elements for how many months, and somehow a pattern printed on it only disappeared at the exact moment the cop tried to take a photo of it? Then you had a single strand of the girl's hair found in the trunk, which is weak, most people who've ever put a hair brush in their luggage can probably say the same.

Then, when you thought it couldn't get any weirder, out comes the city employee who found the body, and it turns out he'd been making calls to his friends for months bragging that he'd found the body and it was his "lottery ticket." This was important, because certain findings can be imputed to a defendant who is shown to have engaged in the intentional spoilation or destruction of evidence, which here would have been concealing the location of the body. That door slammed shut when it came out that the guy already knew where she was and held out trying to make a buck off it.

I have never seen a prosecution fall apart like this one. I mean, it's one thing to fail to meet your burden, but it's another thing entirely to spend 6 weeks disproving your own case. All of this should have been fact-checked and investigated before trial. What a ridiculous waste of tax dollars, $2mm spent by the state in forensics alone, when had they properly investigated they would have known they had no case. Either that or they did know, but with a typical prosecution mindset, they decided hey we're going to go for capital murder instead of negligent homicide, and we'll just steal James Cameron's idea from Titanic and cook up some computer videos of a little girl morphing into a skull and whatnot to shock the jury into disregarding the lack of evidence.

Who do the Orange County taxpayers see about their multimillion-dollar refund?

[Dog Walker]

In the British justice system they have an alternative verdict to "Guilty" or "Not Guilty", it is "Not Proven" which might have been a better choice, at least as far as public sentiment goes.

Nice analysis, Chris.

[Timkin]

In any event , I hope this lady can live with what she did.  O wait.. She wasn't proven guilty , so she must not have done it.  About the same level of justice served as with OJ Simpson.  Guess that was a double-suicide, not a murder.

My mother is a lady.  Your mother was a lady.  Casey Anthony is definitely no lady!!!  Patsy Stone would have made a better mother than Casey! ; )

Edina Monsoon would have made a better Mother than Casey Anthony.

Edina: "They are trying to make out , that Patsy is a sex-crazed morally corrupt, drunken high-class prostitute, dahling " 

But you're right Jaxson.    And our justice system is clearly broken when there is  little (none here) doubt that this "Mother" directly took this child's life, and she still was basically slapped on the hand for lying when she actually did far more.   It is just like OJ.  there is no one I have ever talked to , that did not think he murdered his ex and her friend..no one..   I have yet to find anyone who thinks otherwise in this case.  The system is broken.  Period.

[ChriswUfGator]

In any event , I hope this lady can live with what she did.  O wait.. She wasn't proven guilty , so she must not have done it.  About the same level of justice served as with OJ Simpson.  Guess that was a double-suicide, not a murder.

My mother is a lady.  Your mother was a lady.  Casey Anthony is definitely no lady!!!  Patsy Stone would have made a better mother than Casey! ; )

Edina Monsoon would have made a better Mother than Casey Anthony.

Edina: "They are trying to make out , that Patsy is a sex-crazed morally corrupt, drunken high-class prostitute, dahling " 

But you're right Jaxson.    And our justice system is clearly broken when there is  little (none here) doubt that this "Mother" directly took this child's life, and she still was basically slapped on the hand for lying when she actually did far more.   It is just like OJ.  there is no one I have ever talked to , that did not think he murdered his ex and her friend..no one..   I have yet to find anyone who thinks otherwise in this case.  The system is broken.  Period.

The system isn't broken, unless you don't mind executing innocent people. Which would be the result if you changed the system in a way that would allow anyone to be convicted based on the evidence presented at the Anthony trial. You can't always have things both ways, the point of a trial isn't to help the cops. It's an evidentiary fact-finding enterprise, and if the facts don't support the charge brought, then that's really all there is to it and an acquittal was the correct course of action. Did she murder the kid? Nobody knows. Did she probably have something to do with the kid's death in some way? Of course. But nobody knows what that might have been, and unless you connect the dots, you can't just go convicting and sentencing people to death based on gut feelings. People are wrong, often. We already convict far too many innocent people as it is.