In this special edition of Frontpage Symposium, we are joined by a distinguished panel to discuss the Casey Anthony verdict. Our guests today are:
Alan Dershowitz, the renowned criminal and civil liberties lawyer.
Ben Shapiro, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a practicing attorney in Los Angeles. He summered at the Los Angeles County District Attorney Major Crimes Division during law school. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the author of the new book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How The Left Took Over Your TV.
Rob Taylor, a conservative blogger who writes about crime, culture and politics. His website is Greenville Dragnet.
and
William L. Anderson, Ph.D., an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute who also teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland. He is a consultant with American Economic Services.
FP: Alan Dershowitz, Ben Shapiro, Rob Taylor and William Anderson, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.
William Anderson, let us begin with you. What did you think of the verdict?
Anderson: Well, obviously it is very unpopular, but it also is the right verdict, given the evidence that the prosecution put forth. There also is another very unsettling thing that happened that further confirms to me the rightness of the verdict.
The New York Times is reporting that the software expert whose software at first indicated that Casey Anthony had researched “chloroform” 84 times found a glitch in the program and realized that she had gone to that site only one time. He notified the prosecution and police, AND NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. In other words, the prosecution lied to jurors.
To me, when a prosecutor lies, that goes to the heart of the system. Whether or not Casey Anthony was responsible for the death of her child is one thing; that does not go to the heart of a society and its laws. Indeed, we have laws against murder.
However, when prosecutors lie in court and judges enable them and state bars refuse to discipline or disbar them for such acts, that goes to the very heart of our justice system. That declares that the entire system is a lie. And a system in which lying by authorities is encouraged is not a justice system, but rather an Injustice system.
FP: But wait a minute Mr. Anderson, aside from what you raise, the undeniable facts of the case are before us: a mother says she discovered her child dead after she drowned in the pool. Yet she does not dial 911. Instead, she duct tapes Caylee’s mouth and nose and hides her body in the trunk of her car for days, before dumping her in plastic bags in the woods. But what is the need of hiding the body if it was an accident? And why duct tape a child’s nose and mouth if the child has already died from drowning? Casey subsequently goes out to party for a month and lies throughout the whole time where Caylee is.
This doesn’t make an impression on you?
Anderson: Absolutely. I never have said that I believe Casey Anthony is innocent. However, there is a difference between believing someone might have had something to do with the child’s death and actually having killed her. Nonetheless, I don’t think the prosecution proved its case. Furthermore, keep in mind that prosecutors went all out to have the woman executed, yet they had NO proof that there was a first-degree murder. None. And we are supposed to have someone put to death when we don’t have evidence that they committed the crime that would bring an execution?
Perhaps there could have been a manslaughter conviction, but if the prosecution wanted to charge her with manslaughter, then they should have done it. Perhaps the jurors would have been more amenable to that verdict had manslaughter been the charge on the books. However, the prosecutors wanted blood, Nancy Grace wanted blood, and the Usual Suspects wanted blood, and the jurors were not going to give that to them, and I don’t blame them.
When a child dies, we want an explanation and we want someone to be punished. Yet, many innocent people have been convicted of killing a child when there were other causes, and many more have been convicted in cases of false accusation of child molestation. Americans seem to lose perspective when children are involved, and while I understand that, having five of my own children (actually four, but we are in the middle of an adoption and I consider this girl to be our own), I hope that we also can keep perspective.
I do not believe that we need to run over the cliff with Nancy Grace. The idea that such a despicable and dishonest person should be seen as the driving force behind this lynch mob mentality really does bother me.
FP: Rob Taylor, what do you make of William Anderson’s perspective?
Taylor: There are three things wrong with Mr. Anderson’s analysis and I’ll try to keep this brief but I think these points are important.
The first thing I want to point out is that Mr. Anderson illustrates the “CSI effect” in his analysis. While being critical of television coverage of crime Mr. Anderson promotes expectations of evidence that aren’t based in reality. A drug user’s child turns up missing, she blames a person who police prove never met her or the child, then the body of the child is found with duct tape on the skull. Any rational person can figure this one out (attempting to frame someone is clear consciousness of guilt) but Americans have been taught to think that science can prove someone’s guilt or innocence to a 100% certainty. This is simply untrue. In most crimes there is no smoking gun, but we think there always is thanks to how forensic science is portrayed in the media. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” shouldn’t mean no doubt, just that reasonable people would conclude guilt.
Secondly, I take issue with the kind of Infowarsian analysis Mr. Anderson taps into when he claims the prosecution lied about the web searches and thus, the whole system is corrupt. Even when individuals act badly you can’t say an organization as a whole is corrupt. In this instance we’re expected to take the word of some guy who made claims designed to get the name of his software company in the news over the word of the prosecution. The eagerness to believe that law enforcement is universally corrupt and out to oppress innocent people is the product of an incredibly lucrative Internet culture that trades on people’s paranoia.
When Mr. Anderson says “more and more” people are being falsely accused of child abuse, he’s repeating another myth that has been propagated on the Internet. False reports for child molestation or abuse happen at around the same rate as any other crime – 3% or so. In 2010 the California Department of Corrections released a report showing that sex offenders released from prison had a 67% recidivism rate within three years; felons in general had a 75% rate. If “more and more” people are being falsely accused of crimes recidivism would be much lower, no?
The idea that Casey Anthony was just another victim of a fascistic police state will drive a lot traffic and sell a lot of ad space but it’s simply not true and the fact that we entertain such sinister piffle, if I may steal a phrase from Christopher Hitchens, is a stark reminder of the moral and intellectual decline of our nation.
Thirdly, I am concerned by who in this story Mr. Anderson considers to be the villain. Nancy Grace didn’t murder Caylee Anthony, she didn’t throw her body in the swamp and she didn’t try to frame a random woman for kidnapping and murder. Yet, Grace is despicable and dishonest?
There was a People magazine article recently that described Casey Anthony fans and groupies sending her gifts while she was in prison. As a crime blogger I get my fair share of hate mail from people of this sort who claim a child molester was “seduced” by the victim or a wife beater was actually being victimized by a lying woman. For many people in our society, criminals are always the sympathetic figure and everyone else is the bad guy. This sort of morally backward thinking encourages criminality and is largely responsible for cases like Caylee Anthony.
Even if you think Casey Anthony didn’t murder her child, she didn’t report the child missing for a month. She tried to frame an innocent woman for the crime. She is the despicable and dishonest one in this story and that someone as intelligent as William Anderson can’t see that makes me incredibly uncomfortable with where our culture is headed.
FP: Mr. Taylor, I am not sure that Mr. Anderson is defending Casey Anthony as a human being. He is not saying that she is not despicable and dishonest. And in terms of what we are debating, it doesn’t really matter if he thinks that or not or whether we think that or not. What matters, as Mr. Anderson emphasizes, is that the prosecution did not prove its case and to charge someone with first degree murder and to have a jury convict and sentence a woman to death — when there is no solid proof that there was a first-degree murder — is problematic. Right?
Taylor: I wasn’t implying that Mr. Anderson does or doesn’t support Casey Anthony, only that his analysis demonizes commentators while suggesting that the system is corrupt for even bringing the case. The system is not corrupt and the idea of “solid proof” is a myth. A child is dead and her mother avoided reporting her disappearance, then tried to frame someone else. Before juries were populated with armchair forensics experts this would have been an open and shut case.
Now, you may think the prosecution overcharged on this, which may well be true, but how does that translate into an indictment of our entire system? How do we go from the prosecution dropping the ball to some crime reporter on television being despicable and Casey Anthony being the victim of a corrupt system? The prosecution didn’t plan this case out as well as they should have, but I refuse to accept the idea that there’s something wrong with charging her with murder instead of something less serious. Still, the legal issues are best worked out in court, the reaction to this is a moral issue that speaks to where we are as a culture.
The disregard many people have for the victim, for Justice in the philosophical sense and for the truth is what troubles me here. The legal system worked – Anthony had a fair trial in front of a jury of her peers. That doesn’t mean Justice has been served. Caylee Anthony was thrown out like garbage, found with duct tape on her remains. We all know why people duct tape the mouths of children shut. We know why some drugged out party girl doesn’t report her child missing. We know that Casey Anthony deserves the public scorn and shaming she got from these much maligned TV talking heads.
So why are we as a society pretending that everyone else is the villain? Even if Casey didn’t participate in her daughter’s disappearance and murder, her own story is that she left her daughter with the people who molested her as a child. Then she tried to frame an innocent woman for her daughter’s disappearance and death and desecrated her own daughter’s corpse. How exactly is anyone but this fiend despicable?
We live in a society that admires criminality and depravity and has been taught by decades of cultural leftism to hate and distrust law enforcement and criminal justice. That’s why Anthony got off, that’s why people so easily believe allegations of corruption against any prosecutor or police officer, and that’s why people hate a television personality who makes a living criticizing degeneracy.
The prosecution showed that reasonable people could agree that Anthony was involved in the homicide of her daughter. It was a circumstantial case no different than dozens of other cases, some of which are tried with no bodies at all. Was it wise to make it a death penalty case? Maybe not — I’m not a lawyer. Was it right to try to get justice for the child? I say yes, of course.
The prosecution speaks for the murdered victim in these cases. Every murdered child cries out for Justice to be done. To attack the people who (we hope) did their best to make sure someone pays for horrible crimes is wrong. To attack commentators who speak out about crime is also wrong. The prosecution failed, and that’s too bad. But they aren’t the bad guys and neither is Nancy Grace. The mother of a child who had her supposed molesters babysit her daughter then spent a month covering up the child’s disappearance is the bad guy here. The fact that that isn’t conventional wisdom is the basis for any critique I have about the case.
I hope the prosecution did their best, I think they were handed a bad break with the condition of the body and they clearly underestimated Anthony’s defense team. I hope they learn from this and the next time this happens I hope they fight just as hard for the victim.
FP: Alan Dershowitz?
Dershowitz: I am prepared to believe that Casey Anthony is an example of the age old adage that it is better for 10 guilty to go free than for one innocent to be wrongly convicted. When a guilty person goes free because of doubt, the system has worked. When an innocent person is convicted in a doubtful case, the system has failed.
In this case, there is an added element: some of the doubt may have been created by the inactions and actions of Casey Anthony, in failing to report her missing child and in lying to the police. The system does not work when doubt is deliberately created by the defendant. That’s why we have crimes such as obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence—crimes of which Casey Anthony was clearly guilty.
But as William Anderson has pointed out, there may have been a much more serious obstruction of justice on the part of prosecutors. If The New York Times account is correct (July 16, 2011), then the police and prosecutors in this case should be subject to criminal investigation and bar association inquiry regarding their conduct. Here is what the Times has reported:
Assertions by the prosecution that Casey Anthony conducted extensive computer searches on the word “chloroform” were based on inaccurate data, a software designer who testified at the trial said Monday.
The designer, John Bradley, said Ms. Anthony had visited what the prosecution said was a crucial Web site only once, not 84 times, as prosecutors had asserted. He came to that conclusion after redesigning his software, and immediately alerted prosecutors and the police about the mistake, he said.
The finding of 84 visits was used repeatedly during the trial to suggest that Ms. Anthony had planned to murder her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, who was found dead in 2008. Ms. Anthony, who could have faced the death penalty, was acquitted of the killing on July 5.
According to Mr. Bradley, chief software developer of CacheBack, used by the police to verify the computer searches, the term “chloroform” was searched once through Google.
The Google search then led to a Web site, sci-spot.com, that was visited only once, Mr. Bradley added. The Web site offered information on the use of chloroform in the 1800s.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office had used the software to validate its finding that Ms. Anthony had searched for information about chloroform 84 times, a conclusion that Mr. Bradley says turned out to be wrong. Mr. Bradley said he immediately alerted a prosecutor, Linda Drane Burdick, and Sgt. Kevin Stenger of the Sheriff’s Office in late June through e-mail and by telephone to tell them of his new findings. Mr. Bradley said he conducted a second analysis after discovering discrepancies that were never brought to his attention by prosecutors or the police.
Mr. Bradley’s findings were not presented to the jury and the record was never corrected, he said. Prosecutors are required to reveal all information that is exculpatory to the defense.
“I gave the police everything they needed to present a new report,” Mr. Bradley said. “I did the work myself and copied out the entire database in a spreadsheet to make sure there was no issue of accessibility to the data.”
Mr. Bradley, chief executive of Siquest, a Canadian company, said he even volunteered to fly to Orlando at his own expense to show them the findings.
To complicate matters even further, a lawyer representing Bradley has now stated that:
“There have been recent erroneous media reports about Mr. Bradley’s handling of a discrepancy relating to the number of searches regarding the search term ‘chloroform,’” said Bradley attorney Gregory W. Mair in a statement released Wednesday morning. “…Mr. Bradley denies making any comments that either determined and/or implied any wrongdoing on behalf of the prosecutor’s office.”
Someone isn’t telling the truth, and this discrepancy must be aggressively pursued by an independent investigator.
Unfortunately, prosecutorial and police misconduct of the kind described in The New York Times article is all too common. Several years ago my brother and I appealed a first degree murder case in Florida in which the defendant was one vote away from being executed. In that case, the State Attorney willfully suppressed exculpatory evidence—evidence that ultimately proved our client’s innocence. After our client was released, my brother filed a Bar complaint against the State Attorney only to be told that the Bar had no jurisdiction over elected State Attorneys and that his very act of filing a complaint constituted unethical behavior.
Prosecutorial and police misconduct are corrosive to our system of justice. Failure to uncover and aggressively pursue such misconduct, which is endemic in our justice system, is even more corrosive.
Ultimately, it is far more important to determine whether the prosecutor in this case willfully provided false evidence to the jury than it is to decide whether a particular criminal did or did not commit a particular crime, even one as heinous as that alleged in the Anthony case.
Shapiro: Let’s take this piece by piece. Was Casey Anthony guilty of killing her child? You would have to be willfully blind to argue that she wasn’t. Was this proven beyond a reasonable doubt? To me, yes, it was. I do not see a plausible alternative explanation of any sort. I strenuously disagree with Professor Anderson that this was the “right verdict, given the evidence that the prosecution put forth.” The evidence put forth was clear and convincing, notwithstanding the post facto questions about how many times the word “chloroform” was googled. To be clear, the jury was not aware of that controversy; as far as they knew, “chloroform” was googled 84 times. And they still acquitted her. So that issue is a separate one from whether the jury reached the right verdict, seeing as nobody on the jury could have questioned the evidence presented to them (and the fact that the defense did not question it, either).
I also disagree with Professor Anderson that it does not go to the heart of the system when an obvious child murderess walks free. This is not a question of comparable wrongs – the prosecution could have been mishandled, but Casey Anthony was certainly responsible for the murder of her child. It says that the entire system is a lie when O.J. Simpson walks free just as it says that the entire system is a lie when a prosecutor conceals evidence – or when, far more commonly, defense attorneys twist and obfuscate their way to acquittals for defendants who will go out to rape, kill, and steal again. Make no mistake: I believe there is no more pernicious legal saying than the one Professor Dershowitz (full disclosure: I took a class with him at Harvard Law) quotes here, usually attributed to Blackstone: “it is better for 10 guilty to go free than for one innocent to be wrongly convicted.” In point of fact, it is not better for ten guilty men to go free, depending on their crimes, than for one innocent to be wrongly convicted – if the ten guilty men go out and murder five people each, justice has not been served.
This maxim is one of the great non sequiturs of all time. Justice is not a choice between condemning the innocent and acquitting the guilty. It is about establishing the most efficient way of convicting the guilty and acquitting the innocent. That’s why when either of those objectives goes awry – when guilty people walk or when innocents go to prison – the system has been defeated. Let’s not pretend that when Casey Anthony walks, the system has worked, but when Dewey Bozella goes to prison, the system has failed. In both cases, the system has failed.
Unfortunately, our current system has a lot of work to do on both these scores. The biggest problem is the tenor of the debate about Anthony. Was the lawyer for the prosecution good? How about for the defense? Did ancillary players get short shrift from the prosecution? Did the defense pull red herrings out of its bag of tricks? The adversarial system does this on a routine basis, and in all the hubbub over competition, the main objective gets lost: to do justice. I’m an American exceptionalist, but I’ll say this: the European inquisitorial system has the right idea.
Now, to finish with Professor Anderson, this is not about Nancy Grace. This is about Anthony and the fact that she killed her daughter, dumped her in the woods, and went along her merry way for a month, lying to police the entire time.
As far as Mr. Taylor, I agree largely with what he says. I would only say that from the available evidence, I am not at all convinced that the prosecution overcharged here. You find a body with duct tape on it in the woods and mommy was lying for a month about it, you find corpse evidence from mommy’s trunk, you find mommy searching questionable terms on the computer … that spells premeditation to me. And I fully agree with Mr. Taylor that the entire prosecutorial system is not corrupt – if it is, it’s only to a fraction of the degree of the defense system, which routinely hides evidence and lies to juries, and which both Professors Anderson and Dershowitz seem to dismiss as part of the aphoristic throwaway that the guilty man needs to go free to protect the innocent.
The whole system is the problem. The defense cheats and lies, so some prosecutors cheat and lie. Defense calls lying witnesses and slanders police officers, so police testify. Defense wants acquittals; prosecutions want convictions. Nobody wants the truth. Adversarialism is not going to come to the truth. A search geared toward truth is the only thing that will do so.
Anderson: Mr. Shapiro already knows the truth, as does Mr. Taylor. Both have told us exactly what Casey Anthony did, and a trial should have been a mere formality and that since everyone already knew what Anthony did, the outcome should have been inevitable, if not pre-determined. As for the “CSI effect,” that is nonsense. First, I don’t watch CSI.
Second, from what I can tell, CSI wants us to believe that government investigators brilliantly investigate crimes, never making errors, and never falsely implicating innocent people. That smashes against reality, as the recent FBI crime lab and North Carolina crime lab scandals demonstrated how police framed innocent people, lost evidence, and were criminally incompetent. Somehow, I doubt that reality will find its way to CSI.
Let’s talk about Nancy Grace, since previous comments have defended her. Remember the Duke Lacrosse Case five years ago, the one in which a black, drug-addicted prostitute named Crystal Mangum accused three lacrosse players from Duke University of raping and beating her at a party? (Mangum recently was charged with murder for allegedly stabbing her boyfriend to death.)
No one was more accusatory of those players than Nancy Grace. When one guest reminded her of the presumption of innocence, she spat back, “Let’s move to Nazi Germany,” where a trial would be irrelevant. In other words, to Grace, presuming innocence — a bedrock of Anglo-American criminal law — is akin to creating a Roland Friesler-type court system. When she was a prosecutor in Georgia, she was cited by then-U.S. Appeals Court Justice Jeff Sessions (now a U.S. Senator from Alabama) for “playing fast-and-loose” with the facts in a case. It seems that Grace lied to jurors — in a case in which the defendant was found guilty, and the lies she told did not factor into the evidence that proved his guilt. In other words, she lied just because she could do it.
Nancy Grace also figures into a case involving a friend of mine, Tonya Craft. Some of you might remember that Craft — who was featured last year on the Today Show — was accused of molesting three young girls, including her daughter. The case took place in the judicial district where I lived for nearly 30 years in North Georgia, and I knew a number of people involved. Although the trial was a sham, she was acquitted as jurors angrily noted that prosecutors and witnesses lied throughout. Nancy Grace told Tonya that she was “guilty.” Yeah, Grace and her sidekick Wendy Murphy always look at the evidence. Right. With Grace, an accusation is the same as proof of guilt.
As for Mr. Taylor’s claim that only a tiny portion of molestation claims are false, that is not true. Since the passage of the Mondale Act in 1974 — Ground Zero for false abuse claims — molestation claims have skyrocketed, and so have false accusations. We remember the Amirault, the McMartin, Kerns County, and Little Rascals cases. Attorneys that specialize in these cases will tell you that all it takes is an accusation, and the conviction machinery goes to work. I read the transcripts of the interviews in the Craft case and will tell you that the Children’s Advocacy Center employees purposely asked leading questions, bullied children, and broke even CAC standards for interviewing young children.
Yes, the death of a young child is a tragedy, and so is sexual abuse. However, that does not give reason to railroad people just because it is convenient to do so and it makes us feel good.
All other things being equal, what would the verdict have been if the accused was father instead?
Why would a young mother Google chloroform even ONCE, and later have evidence of chloroform use in her car along with the overwhelming stench of decomposition? Even if the prosecution was duplicitous in not correcting its claim that she looked up the word 84 times, it still does not explain her search or the finding. Unless she was a sociopath, how could the grieving mother of a missing child party her brains out, get tattooed, and participate in a "beautiful body contest" while a fictitious babysitter-kidnapper held her two-year-old? Why would anyone believe anything Casey Anthony said when she was proved to be a liar so often it would make Pinocchio blush? This travesty of justice was like a tennis match in which a laughably poor 3.0 player emerged the winner only due to his 5.0 opponent's errors. The reason why the country was riveted to this trial was that there was a mountain of circumstantial evidence, and a collective desire for justice for an innocent — no, not the murderess Casey Anthony, but the beautiful gift from God that she discarded like garbage.
You are right.
I agree with you fully! You said the truth! Anthony is guilty by the truth and common sense judgement.If jurors would have looked at the truth laid before them,the crazy behavior that Anthony did while she knew her child was dead in a swamp,and told lie after lie to Police. If she had been innocent she would not have had a reason to blame anyone,she would not have any reason to lie to police,and she would not have any reason to be on trial if she had been not guilty.
I agree with Rob Taylor, this jury's verdict shows "how far our culture has devolved." Ben Shapiro made a point that for many years I have contemplated: "One of the great idiocies of the current judicial system is the notion that when a defendant is brought into court, juries are supposed to engage in the mental fiction that the person is innocent until proven guilty." The accused, in my view should be "presumed" neither innocent nor guilty. He or she should simply be "presumed" accused. Professor Dershowitz invokes the Bible. I have a copy of his book, "The Case For Peace: How The Arab-Israeli Conflict (sic) Can Be Resolved." I got the impression Mr. Dershowitz believes those who justify the Jewish people's right to the land of Israel (Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, etc.) on the Bible, are the sort of extremists who are "enemies of peace."
So one of the great idiocies is the presumption of innocence? Then what should the standard by which one reaches a verdict? Thanks, but no thanks.
Anyone who agrees with a blogger like Rob Taylor with no credentials and adheres to the Nancy Grace school of criminology should be suspect.
The jury was so wrong in this decision.
Glazov does it again-another killer debate!
Living here in Central Florida you could not get away from this case. The only thought that kept me from getting sick on this was that I hope one day Casey has to face her daughter eye to eye and hear Caylee ask her, "How was your life, mother?" and then watch as the sentence is pronounced. What is forgotten by all murderers is that this life is fleeting and a mere flicker measured against eternity. THAT is what is truly REAL. FORVER is a long time. May little Caylee rest in peace.
We couldn't escape it in the rest of the country, either!!
Any mother who would party with her daughter missing certainly has something wrong going on. Juries in America seem to be so stupid. They do not understand reasonable doubt.
I think someone will eventually issue a case of justice to the woman.
This is an excellent article showing why most intelligent people with common sense despise lawyers. Too many words from LIARS er lawyers mouths and too little common sense.
Anyone at this point arguing the merits of jurisprudence in this case makes me want to vomit.
Okay, I resemble that. Do I believe she bumped her kid? In a word, "Si", probably. But my word is not good enough, and neither is yours. The prosecution had a tough case from the beginning, trust me on this one. The jury's verdict is the jury's verdict, and they didn't believe the prosecution proved their case. They never said she didn't do it. Those are completely different thing. The jury's verdict can't be "so wrong", unless the jury was tampered with, in some way. The jury's verdict, is the jury's verdict, and has nothing to do with being innocent.
Admittedly I take a hard line. A mother wraps duct tape around her child's nose and mouth; she hides the body in her car, then in woods, conceals the disappearance of her child for thirty one days while she parties; she lies to police so that by the time the body is found it is decomposed beyond recognition; she falsely accuses a baby sitter, etc. All these are constitute a capital crime. She should be executed. Have you read the account in 1 Kings chapter 3, the judgment of Solomon, in which king ruled between two women both claiming to be the mother of a child? The judgment was entirely based on circumstantial evidence like this case – except for the duct tape. It is a famous case. What has become of our society that we let this wickedness go unpunished?
It is so truly tragic that such a small child could have been treated so
brutally and subjected to the vile character of her idiot mother. The
grandparents must live with the knowledge they did not intervene and
I believe they were aware their daughte was unfit but the did not act.
The mother is representative of the new generation of selfish, self
centered individuals that are without familial ties that nurture but
are government drones, indoctrinated in government schools outside
of our former acculturation. In the "50's I was aware of how each
Church and Synagogue were working to build strong close knit families
and communities that worked together for safety and livability. How
it all has changed, it is depressing and sad beyond belief………..William
Executed?? It could have been an accidental death and, in panic, put duct tape on her mouth to make the "kidnapped and dumped" story be plausible. The accident may have been from stupid neglect such as going into the house to answer the phone while her child was swimming and getting engrossed in a 20 minute conversation and instead of admitting to such a thing tried to deflect it with a B.S. story. Execution is reserved for cold blooded premeditated murder, not gross neglect, child endangerment, stupidity, lying to the police, covering it up, etc., all of which constitute a crime, just not the crime she was on trial for. She may be a cold woman, but cold blooded premeditated murder wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt, hence, the correct verdict. Had she been on trial for man slaughter, there would probably have been a correct verdict there. Guilty.
Casey Anthony was so guilty. I get why our country is the way it is, and that is a great thing. However, our system didn't get the correct verdict. Our system works, but it failed in this case! Caylee Anthony is the victim here. I don't wanna hear about Casey Anthony out shopping at Old Navy, and and what she's been wearing. I care about Caylee. Her birthday is coming up on August 9th, and it's very sad that this precious baby would have been 6. I often find myself wondering what her life would have been like if her mother hadn't killed her. She was a beautiful baby girl. George Anthony was beaten down so bad on the stand it made me cry. For the defense to call him selfish and that he didn't care about Caylee is disgusting. Are you really teling me that George Anthony went into Casey Anthony's room, found a heart sticker and put it on Caylee's mouth? When Casey Anthony mailed letters all the time with heart stickers and put them on her dead pets, that she buried in the same woods!! And did no one forget about how the bounty hunter woman said Casey ran up to her and giggled and stuck a heart sticker on her knee? Hmm, odd much?
No she was not, "guilty". The jury found her "not guilty". I didn't "like" the verdict either, but I don't count and neither do you. There is no such thing as a "correct" verdict. The verdict is the verdict. Not guilty has nothing to do with whether you committed the crime or not.
Also, Casey Anthony wasn't upset when the police said they found bones by the park near her house she just smirked and went back into her jail cell, but when they told her remains were found in the woods, she lost and had to have help, she was having an attack! Duh, it's cause she knew where the body was!
Oh, good Lord! Not another "panel of experts" to pontificate about Casey Anthony. We got 3 years of that from Nasty Grace. How did that work out?
Three experts and a random idiot blogger you mean.
Please sign the below petition to stop Casey Anthony from profiting off the death of her little girl.
http://www.change.org/petitions/dont-profit-off-t…
Would that also apply to the Grand Parents and the Media? What about the Prosecution showing up on national TV.. and then there is that Judge Strickland. Are you people in Florida not in the least bit concerned about your justice system? It failed and YOU and the MEDIA need to be paying far closer attention.
I don't think it is fair the Prosecution can write a book and the accused is banned from telling their side of the story? This case has been so outrageously exploited the truth will NEVER be known.
If you actually want to be able to debate the Casey Anthony case or ANY case for that matter…. YOU MUST have actually watched the ENTIRE trial. NONE of you did. I DID. The defense did in fact point out the glaring internet report to the jury. It also made sure it was noted by the Judge that the prosection may have deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence as the defense was the one to figure this out on their own.
What was the duct tape all about? Covering the child's mouth and nose? What about the tattoos and the partying? What about falsely accusing a baby sitter? Why did she conceal the child's body in her car, then in the woods and lie and conceal her child's whereabouts for thirty one days? What was that all about?
AND if there are no laws that can slap a prosecutor for lying then you better start making them. The prosecution in this case was quite adamant that THEY could not be held in any way responsible for their actions handling the case. SHOCKING… In fact the prosecution NEVER mentioned 84 searches in their closing arguements… because they knew they had been CAUGHT
I agree a "finding of truth type legal system" is better than prosecutors bent on convictions at any cost and defense lawyers wanting acquittals at any cost. __The media should not be allowed to comment on ANY case what so ever until ithe case has been tried. AND that media source must have actually watched every second of the trial before making a single comment. AND if any information is found to be incorrect in their stories… they should be FINED. Every single court case should be broadcast in entirety in the jurisdiction. __That would be a one giant leap toward truth and justice.
Should you have been required to read of every word of this essay before your first comment? Also – maybe instead of watching every second of a trial people would be working but hey, I'm just a crazy conservative.
I did read the whole article. You didn't? USE your BRAIN.
Well argued.
Your obvious selfish agenda's ruined this article. If the above kinds of common sense ways of handling justice were followed. Misguided commentators exploited by the media
would not be making false judgements and leaping to incredibly uninformed postings.
The media needs to quit exploiting the justice system for cash and ego and PURE ENTERTAINMENT.. Shame on you. The media and indeed journalists are to be a unbiast neutral party reporting on the FACTS.
Yes, people who care about Caylee Anthony's death should be ashamed. People with opinions on cases should be ashamed. What a wonderful world it would be if we all never made a judgement. It is selfish of me to want justice for the dead. It's unselfish of you to demand the government censor the media because you don't like criminals being pointed at. You've got this all figured out.
You are so right R Scott, however I am afraid your common sense and logic is lost on a society that has become increasingly emotional with a need for the warm fuzzies, and drama. I personally believe Casey Anthony is guilty, but the prosecution charged the case too high to start with, without the legal proof they needed to win.
The Media today have no credibility in my opinion. They have turned high profile court cases into modern day Roman Circuses where you had the gladiators going up against lions or other gladiators, for the people to get their morbid entertainment, without any regard for the people involved or the facts. We do not need the lynch mobs of old, nowadays we have the media lynch mobs.
People seem to keep forgetting that it is up to the prosecution to prove their case, and the jury is given instructions as to how they decide a case, based on the what the law allows in that particular state, so they just can't do whatever they please.
We have a case that is going to be high profile out west here, and the police investigators and the DA's office are being very careful, so that when the case goes
to trial, they want to be sure that these two losers are going to go to prison for the rest of their lives where they belong, or possibly get the death penalty.
I say they should take all the time they need, to get it right, as much as they possibly can.
And for the Cuban Refugee… the media should have told you. The defense proved that the reason Chloroform was searched once was because the guy Casey was dating at the time put up a pic of a man and woman on a date.. and the words "win her over with chloroform" on his myspace page.. and she looked it up to find out what Chloroform was. Once.
The media might have wanted to tell you the FACTS from the trial but they have been pushing your emotional buttons so long.. that they just could not slip back into commense sense and TRUTH… because the truth in this legal case goes against the fired up popular opinion and they can't risk their ratings… and their lives….. now to tell you the truth…
Yes, please, tell us the truth, R. Scott … why are you so passionate about this case? Why are you dripping with antipathy for anyone who sees through the sham and deception of your "innocent," lily-white, could-have-been-a-nun Casey? Who do you suppose killed Caylee, R. Scott? Use your "common" sense …
What truth are you talking about? If you checked you would see that the software guy who reported the error regarding the number of searches was incorrect on the dates he published. The prosecution notified the defense of what happened as they were required, however by that time the not guilty verdict was in. In addition the chloroform search would not have been an issue had traces of chloroform not been found in the trunk. The prosecution may have made some mistakes but it was the defense that lied, slandered, and broke enough rules to have the lead attorney kicked out of court.
Another note on this suddenly 'expert' defense team. Had they lost, CA had a very reasonable shot at retrial due to incompetent defense. This defense pulled every dirty trick in the book leaving morality and ethics in the same swamp where little Caylee Anthony was found. They lucked out when an equally incompetent jury bailed them out.
IF every member of that jury had kept their mouth shut they would not be catching anywhere near the flack they are but Juror number 2 or 3, I forget which, does them all a disfavor when she tries to explain their process. The process was, they had no freaking process.
The dates were the same on the reports…. it was the "date" the cachback guy sent the notice to the prosecution. No one in the Anthony home ever searched 84 times for Chloroform and the two different reports were very clear… the states report completely missed the "myspace" searches… how convenient……Traces of Chloroform? Actually the states witness said there were astronomical amounts of Chloroform… a sure sign your "study" is waaaaaaaaaaaaay off base.. and why would that be… Chlorofrom is in EVERYTHING… the carpet..wet bathing suits from a pool… the list goes on…. the Fabreaze the grandmother used in the car…. you can test my car and find astronimical amounts of Chloroform.
Before reading the article I wondered why FP was asking an economist to comment on a criminal legal case that didn't involve econnomics. As for Mr. Taylor's opinions what makes them important or even credible. What kind of authority on a subject does being "a blogger" mean? After reading the article I am more puzzled why these men were selected. Surely, you could have found two more people with legal expertise to engage in the debate. Both Mr. Dershowitz and Mr. Shapiro shared enlightening opinions for the layman.
Yeah, the opinions of jaded, godless in at least one case lawyers.
Derschowitz actually has said that he could write the ten commandments better than God.
Beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean beyond any conceivable doubt. Anything is POSSIBLE. We are taught from day one that the least likely thing is always the truth; everything you thought you knew turns out to be what they call a "myth." We think that intellect is the ability to deny the obvious. But it's not. Our society no longer knows what intellect is. Yes, this case shows the decay in our culture, decay that starts in school and gets worse in the media. CSI, where the obvious turns out to be the truth, is the least of our problems.
Seems to me that the Duke Lacrosse trio have an actionable case for defamation against Rob Taylor.
How so? Did they not admit to hiring "entertainment" from an escort agency?
Like I just stated, adding some random armchair analyst like Taylor makes this article good for a laugh. It just seemed funny to have three legal experts… and Rob Taylor, who probably took notes watching Nancy Grace.
Think on this scenario. Casey Anthony gets cloroform to quiet her daughter down
so that she can put duct tape on her mouth. She want's to go out to party, drug up
and have a wild night, every night but the kid is in the way and maybe she has those
nights where she can not get some one to babysit and is tired of hearing her parents
on the issue of having the child dumped on them, she is a bad mother etc. and
the whole thing is she doesn't want to hear it so she has her brilliant plan. Cloroform
the kid and put duct tape over her mouth so no one can hear her crying in the trunk.
What happens when the kid wakes up, she tries to cry and can not, she is frightened
and upset and does what a two year old does, throws up but because of the duct
tape she chokes to death. Casey Anthony finds the body after sobering up and
takes it into the woods and continues as all addicts do with her obsession.
She should have been found guilty of manslaughter at the least. In a more sinister
account she would swing and not how she would want to………………William
The duct tape…. consider this…. the family has a history a long one of burying their dead pets in the backyard… in a blanket, garbage and duct tape.. THREE pieces of duct tape…. a family member wrapped that baby up… which one? And Why did George Anthony put a slab of cement just days after he says he last saw his daughter and granddaughter? He made the cement himself… and why did he tell police he SAW his daughter in a car and chased her down the highway? and why did he call Casey… the ONLY time he calls her from work.. is the day the baby was last seen? If you watch the whole trial.. you will ber SHOCKED at what the media NEVER told you. It is far more interesting than the crap they are spinning to get ratings…. the truth my is stranger than the fiction the media is feeding you.
This is another plausible explanation of accidental death instead of premeditated murder. Nothing proved premeditated murder, but plenty of evidence proved involvement. Still the correct verdict on the charge for which she was on trial.
I would add the child may have suffocated due to lack of oxygen, heat stroke or
was frightened to death…………it may be that there were other players but the
entire situation was so stupid and that much idiocy speaks to a deranged mind,
her life can not end well, stupid sticks to the landscape and is become and
epidemic…………………………………………………………………………..William
This woman is a pathological liar, a low life narcissist…..real trailer trash….. now she will have to live out her life with a memory she cannot dispel. She knows what happened!!!! She may have excaped legal justice, but her sentence is just beginning…..a life of regret, sorrow and even misery….that her lies cannot dispel.
I don't think you are right about that. She was not grieving when her daughter’s body was decomposing in the woods. She only thinks about herself. She will get rich, and will try to use her opportunity of being famous (in a wrong way) as much as possible. She is hiding now, but wait, we will hear from her again. But, personality usually doesn't change, and I think someday she will commit another crime and will be sent to prison, where she deserves to be.
I don't think you are right about that. She was not grieving when her daughter’s body was decomposing in the woods. She only thinks about herself. She will get rich, and will try to use her opportunity of being famous (in a wrong way) as much as possible. She is hiding now, but wait, we will hear from her again. But, personality usually doesn't change, and I think someday she will commit another crime and will be sent to prison, where she deserves to be.
I feel very sorry for her….she seems to be without any real feelings….and unable to tell the truth about what happened….I apologize for calling her names. She is a troubled person, no doubt about it. Perhaps she will have a break through someday and let out the truth.
That's right ,BUT , the jury DID NOT know what happened , atleast not to the point to be beyond reasonable doubt .Maybe all have forgot , the charge was premeditated murder /warranting a death penalty , therefore premeditation had to be proved , also the manner of death . In the jury's opinion it was not.. I dont know , it seems the author is leaning towards some "condition " the country is in that brought about the decision to acquit . Bunk ! trials and decisions like this have been around for two hundred years .And they've gone either way ,much to the surprise and chagrin of the public at large .
To R Scott:
Casey did not look up chloroform or what is chloroform she looked up HOW TO MAKE Chloroform
There seems to be the opinion that if the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence then Casey Anthony should be set free. Casey was guilty and the evidence was there to prove it. The duct tape established premeditation without the need for 84 searches for chloroform.
However, withholding evidence is a crime and entirely too many prosecutors engage in it. To deal with this I propose the Equivalent Sentence Rule. Any prosecutor found guilty of withholding or fabricating evidence should receive the same sentence that he asked for in the case in which he violated proper prosecution ethics. That means that in the Duke Lacrosse team case the prosecutor, if found guilty of deliberately withholding evidence, would serve the sentence for rape. The rule should also be applied to police officers and expert witnesses, such as crime lab technicians, who fabricate evidence used to convict accused criminals.
The Equivalent Sentence Rule would eliminate most, if not all, cases of prosecutorial misconduct. Today, rogue prosecutors are rarely caught and usually suffer no more than disbarment. One prosecutor getting a needle in the arm will likely make prosecutorial misconduct resulting in convictions of innocent persons extremely rare.
the duct tape evidence was explained by the family, Lee, Cindy and even George eventually acknowledged tthat GEORGE buries the family pets the same way Caylee was found, blanket, plastic garbage bags … THREE pieces of duct tape to seal th ends and the fold in the middle.. and then he buries them in the backyard… why did George Anthony put a slab of cement in his back yard days after what the prosecution believes is the date Caylee died? He did it himself…. and then there is Kronk.. the Anthony meter reader…. did he come across the baby in the bag.. on his rounds.. and grab it thinking it was a little somehting he might want… bit of a thief.. and then decides to dump it in the woods when he decides he doesn't want it…. consider the Kronk evidence…. did Kronk grab the baby before George could finish burying it? The evidence in the trial is fascinating…. far more interesting that what the LAZY media is telling you.
All of what you cite are suppositions for which there is no evidence but that's not the important point.
Casey got away with murder and nothing can be done about that now. However, what can be done is seeing that the prosecutor is fired and disbarred for withholding evidence. That will prevent him from committing more ethical breaches that could result in an innocent person from being imprisoned, or worse, executed.
It may be that they were led away from acute attention to the mother and were
scrutinizing the prosecution to a point of not being able to get past the inability
to come to a conclusion asked for. Red herrings were plentiful in the trial but
I saw nothing that ameliorated the accused's position of being the cause of
the childs death but plenty that was absented in prooving intent and evidence
of murder. If the case was manslughter it would have come out guilty under
the court of law, as it is, it is guilty under the court of public opinion………..William
You would have to look at Geroge too… he was in the home the day they believe the baby died. I don't know what happened in that house that day… but I think George also knows. His actions were just as suspicious if not more so than Casey's.
I think the father and Casey know pretty much what happened, but there seems to be a complete disconnect of truth and reality with these folks…..some kind of moral or mental illness that defies logic. The jury did not have the proof to convict, true. But Casey and her family will have to live with the truth burning inside them.
It seems that the truth is not good enough for many people that find themselves
in unbelievable circumstances. It may be that George found the baby in
his daughters trunk. They may know how she died but that information
would mean a jail sentence and tried to obfuscate and mislead because
they just could not deal with it nor accept responsibility for what happened.
William
I think George knows also and he will never be able to deal with it.
William
I have to take issue with Mr. Taylor's "Infowarsian" criticism above. As someone who myself has seen some very undeniable local police and DA corruption, including total violation of their duties, fabrication of evidence, perjury even worse, it is frightening to think this guy won't even admit it is going on and ridicules the facts as mere conspiracy theory. How can anyone cope with this when you know for a fact that it is going on with such a reaction? How can the system be fixed if the corruption can't be seen clearly because people like him say these things without knowing the true situation?
Thankfully the internet has brought this problem to light, because it's the only voice those of us in the know have to talk about it. Otherwise, all it gets is lots of whitewash, and you feel like you're living in a parallel universe or something. It's hard not to feel like the conservatives are as crazy as the liberals with this kind of talk. I'm sorry, Mr. Taylor, let me put it as gently as I can, you are wrong, and you don't have a clue what's really happening.
Mr. Taylor's ignorant and hateful ravings about the Duke lacrosse case pretty much disqualify everything he says. The only people we can be certain that did not have sex with Ms. Mangum in the days leading up to the party are the players. The strippers took the money, danced for a few minutes, and left.
I wonder why Dershowitz still insists on surrounding himself with idiots like Rob Taylor, who couldn't tell the difference between a pie graph and a pot pie. Its a laugh that some local idiot blogger would ever be considered "esteemed" by anyone. He's definitely the odd man out in this debate. Here is your esteemed group– three experts and some uncouth blogger with a bigger mouth than brain.
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