Anthony Found Not Guilty

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As the title says. Everything I've heard about this was evidently correct - that the prosecution did a great job at proving that she was a liar, a terrible person, and one of the worst mothers in history, but they didn't do a great job proving that she murdered her kid. Story

 

That is very sad. Our legal system failed us today.

 

I'm not sure it did. I mean, it wasn't a hung jury - all 12 jurors voted that she was not guilty. With no direct evidence tying Anthony to the murder of her daughter, I can see how there can be reasonable doubt on the part of the jury. That or the prosecution didn't do a very good job.

She was found guilty of four counts of lying to the police, each charge of which can carry a maximum of one year in prison. However, given the length of time she has been in prison awaiting trial, it is more likely that the judge will give her time served, and she'll walk out of court on Thursday (when the sentencing takes place) a free woman.

 

At least we all know she will have to live with what she has done the rest of her life. She is young yet, it will have a lot of time to eat away at her.

 

I was a little surprised that the judge didn't throw out the four guilty verdicts about lying to the police. I half expected him to do that and release her then and there. If what I'm reading is correct the worst case scenario for her is four consecutive one year sentences. Considering she has been in jail for almost 3 years and would be eligbile for time off for good behavior I consider it highly likely she will be released on Thursday (her sentencing date) or at the latest probably by the end of the year.

My favorite part of the post verdict confereces were when the #2 on the defense team basically told the media to go **** themselves for calling them idiots and that she had no chance of a "not guilty" verdict. My second favorite was when the court media person came out and told the press that the jurors have all decided not to speak to the press. The press were acting in a "How dare they" attitude.

As to the verdict, this was clearly a case of the prosecution charging her incorrectly. I believe for political purposes the prosecution was going for the death penalty when they should have been going for a much lower level murder charge and a ten to fifteen year sentence.

My over/under on books being written by the jurors and anthony is 3.

I am also giving even odds she ends up posing nude. Not that she is a great beauty, but she will sell magazines for someone and I don't see her having a lot of other opportunities in her future.

 

Assuming she's not a sociopath.

 

She has already said she'd love to get pregnant again and have more children...

Anyway, a few of the jurors have spoken to the media at this point, and they cited three reasons for the "not guilty" verdict.

1. There was no direct evidence linking Casey to the death of her child, nor any witnesses testifying that happened.

2. There was no cause of death established (i.e., the prosecution couldn't prove that she didn't drown in a pool).

3. The only motive the prosecutors provided was that Casey was a partier. (The problem being that the defense was able to show that most of the nights Casey went out, the grandparents cared for their granddaughter.)

I also found it interesting that of the jurors that were interviewed they agreed that this was more of a case where "reasonable doubt" remained more than Casey being wrongly accused.

The thing I found irritating was the people outside the courthouse protesting the verdict and calling for an appeal. Set aside for the moment that our Constitution specifically protects people from double jeopardy, and that you can't appeal a ruling just because you don't like the verdict the jury handed out. This court case took about two months, and unless you were in the courtroom or on the jury you didn't hear all the testimony and evidence provided. How can you say that the jury came to the wrong conclusion when you weren't there?

 

You don't go out partying when your child is missing, let alone not report her missing unless you had something to do with it. There is no excuse to made there. That is basic common sense. Now, I know that is not enough to convict, which completely sucks in this case, but it's the law. I agree with the law, but not the outcome.

 

That exactly right. The only person who really knows what happened the day Caylee died is Casey, and I doubt she's talking anytime soon about that. So we are left with something that just doesn't sit well - we don't have a reasonable explanation for what happened, nor do we have a reasonable explanation for the outcome, and we don't like that. However, I also wouldn't be OK with convicting someone of murder if the evidence wasn't there (which it evidently wasn't).

Maybe dmc can help here. Isn't it typical that if you're trying to prove a case for murder, that you first establish a cause of death so that you can prove that the person was... you know... actually murdered? That seems to be the weak link here. If the jury is left with the impression that Caylee could have drowned, isn't that the very definition of reasonable doubt?

 

I gotta feeling this case was really the first episode of Law & Order Tampa...

 

The US legal system, and most other Western ones, stipulate that a person must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution was unable to do that, so she walked. No system is perfect, but I'd rather have this one than a kangaroo court of some sort. She is a disgusting human being, and more than likely did kill her child so she could party more, but if we can't prove it, well, then she walks. With any luck, she'll be stupid enough to believe she's Teflon girl and will screw up at some point later in life and end up off the streets getting the punishment that in a moral sense she deserves.

 

I wasn't at the trial, nor did I get a copy of the transcript from the trial, so I can't make an educated and intelligent opinion on the trial. I doubt anybody else without these resources can either.

 

There was actually a tweet that come out (I forget from whom) right after she was acquitted which read: "OJ Simpson thinks this ruling is absurb!"

EDIT: Oh, and the Anthony Family is now receiving death threats.

EDIT2: She got the maximum of sentence of 4 years. Counting the nearly 3 years she's already served, she will likely not be in jail for a full year. She's going back to jail for now, but probably will be out for good behavior in about one month.

 

It has been captivating television the past couple of days. The latest is she will be released on Wednesday.

 

Since she HAS already done substantial hard time and got a maximum penalty for lying in four different cases, my money's on the "yes we know we should've nailed her for life for this but alas, we can't PROVE she did all that so let's use what we actually have on her" way of thinking.

On a side note, I think it's problematic that the MAXIMUM penalty for lying in court is just one year. It's one thing to lie if someone's putting death threats on you if you don't, but just willingly lying to cover one's own ass is just about as bad as it gets in my book. As it is now, there's hardly any actual incentive to pleading guilty and saving everyone's time when you get a free spin on the "get out of jail" card roulette.

Not that I can think of how it could be done otherwise, either, it's just an annoyance to the common layman such as myself.

 

She wasn't convicted of perjury or lying in a court. She was convicted of lying to the police. If everyone was put away for that (Son, do you know how fast you were going?) there wouldn't be enough prisons. Personally, the thing I don't understand is why anyone in their right mind would ever talk to a police officer. An attorney friend of mine said you shouldn't even tell a policeman what time it is. If Anthony had invoked her Miranda/5th amendment rights she wouldn't have been convicted of anything.

 

To build on Snook's point, here's the big difference: Lying to a police officer is a misdemeanor. If it wasn't such a high profile case, she probably wouldn't have even been tried for it, and if she was, she probably wouldn't have done any time.

Lying in court, OTOH, (which is perjury) is a felony. I'm sure the penalty varies from state to state, but you can go to jail for quite a long while for that one.