“Casey Anthony Jurors Discarded Common Sense”
Wednesday, 13 Jul 2011 03:43 PM
By Ronald Kessler
Alex Ferrer, a former criminal judge in Miami, said on Fox News that when jurors deliberate, they sometimes leave behind their common sense.
As a judge, Ferrer said he has seen many not-guilty verdicts when it was clear to him that the defendant was guilty.
So it was with the verdict in the murder trial of Casey Anthony.
Comments after the verdict by jurors and an alternate juror suggest they had no idea what their job was. They said the prosecution had not shown exactly how Caylee Anthony died, where she died, or when she died. That was not their obligation. Their obligation was to determine if Casey Anthony had killed her daughter.
Often defendants are convicted of murder even when a body is never found. In those cases, no one knows how they died. The state medical examiner in the Anthony case testified that the presence of duct tape around Caylee’s nose and mouth and the fact that she was found discarded in plastic bags clearly indicated she had been murdered. She ruled the death “undetermined homicide.” Yet the jurors disregarded that and insisted on speculating that Caylee could have drowned, as the defense proposed.
Drowning in swimming pools “is a major way that a lot of children die down here in Florida,” the jury foreman told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, as if that was relevant.
As for who did it, Casey Anthony’s failure to report the death of her daughter for 31 days, her lying to investigators trying to find her, and her obvious jubilation after the death of her daughter are as compelling as any DNA evidence.
The fact that multiple witnesses, including Casey’s mother, smelled what they described as a decomposed body in the trunk of Casey’s car nails the case shut for me. On top of that, Casey’s computer showed searches for information on chloroform. An expert from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee testified that “shockingly high” levels of chloroform were found in a sample of carpet from the trunk of her car.
Many commentators have said we must respect the findings of the jury and not second guess their decision. That is pure baloney. If we are to maintain our system of laws, we should respect the jury system. It is far better than carrying out lynchings in banana republics. But as demonstrated when juries convict people who are later exonerated by DNA evidence, juries are far from perfect. We have no obligation to pretend that they are by saying we respect their verdict however mindless it may be.
In the Casey Anthony case, the jury failed at its job, and a murderer went free.
As a judge, Ferrer said he has seen many not-guilty verdicts when it was clear to him that the defendant was guilty.
So it was with the verdict in the murder trial of Casey Anthony.
Comments after the verdict by jurors and an alternate juror suggest they had no idea what their job was. They said the prosecution had not shown exactly how Caylee Anthony died, where she died, or when she died. That was not their obligation. Their obligation was to determine if Casey Anthony had killed her daughter.
Often defendants are convicted of murder even when a body is never found. In those cases, no one knows how they died. The state medical examiner in the Anthony case testified that the presence of duct tape around Caylee’s nose and mouth and the fact that she was found discarded in plastic bags clearly indicated she had been murdered. She ruled the death “undetermined homicide.” Yet the jurors disregarded that and insisted on speculating that Caylee could have drowned, as the defense proposed.
Drowning in swimming pools “is a major way that a lot of children die down here in Florida,” the jury foreman told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, as if that was relevant.
As for who did it, Casey Anthony’s failure to report the death of her daughter for 31 days, her lying to investigators trying to find her, and her obvious jubilation after the death of her daughter are as compelling as any DNA evidence.
The fact that multiple witnesses, including Casey’s mother, smelled what they described as a decomposed body in the trunk of Casey’s car nails the case shut for me. On top of that, Casey’s computer showed searches for information on chloroform. An expert from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee testified that “shockingly high” levels of chloroform were found in a sample of carpet from the trunk of her car.
Many commentators have said we must respect the findings of the jury and not second guess their decision. That is pure baloney. If we are to maintain our system of laws, we should respect the jury system. It is far better than carrying out lynchings in banana republics. But as demonstrated when juries convict people who are later exonerated by DNA evidence, juries are far from perfect. We have no obligation to pretend that they are by saying we respect their verdict however mindless it may be.
In the Casey Anthony case, the jury failed at its job, and a murderer went free.
Casey Anthoy...murderer roaming free?
Everyone has at least heard about or even watched the Casey Anthony trial on television, so this murder is not new to anyone. The trial has consumed several hours of my summer. If you have not been keeping up with the story, the verdict of the trial was that Casey, mother of young Caylee, was found “not guilty of first-degree murder” and found guilty of 4 counts of “giving false information to authorities”.
In my eyes, the jurors didn’t fulfill their job duties, their job consisted of finding if Casey killed Caylee or not, they insisted on deciding how she died. I know that the prosecution has to display evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and that is hard to do when there were only two people on the scene, and one is presently dead. I do understand that’s the law, and we need to abide by it.
It just appears that the defense asked the jurors to ignore their common sense, and they did. The part that bothers me the most is that people need to do their job to the fullest of their ability. The jurors stayed at the trial for nearly 90 days, and I do know they were tired, but if I were them I would have wanted to finish my job, so that my time would not be wasted. I figure they just wanted to collect their money and go home, but why wouldn’t you want to set an example for other mothers out there. Now, all mothers, in Florida and all over the world, think they can murder their child and get away with it.
The trial was entertaining, and I learned a lot about our court system. Although I have always been interested in government, this trial and the jurors made me rethink everything that my career interest was based on. Maybe one day, I will be the one that passes a law that says “When all the circumstantial evidence points to the CRAZY mother. She could be convicted as the murderer!”
I was shocked by the verdict as well, but we have to be careful not to convict based on public opinion. Our justice system is centered around "reasonable doubt" so that we do not compound a tragedy by wrongfully convicting an innocent person. It would have been interesting to hear the reasoning in the jurors' deliberation room.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as a mother, I assure you that the fear of getting caught is not the overwhelming factor in keeping me from murdering my child! ;-)