Oh, defense is absolutely permitted flights of fancy, and that’s a good thing. That’s the entire reason there is a jury of peers, to distinguish if the prosecutor’s case is sound and if the defense’s flight of fancy is reasonable. And defense does not have to give any testimony or alibi (also a good thing), but giving a series of obviously false statements/alibis that are documented & admissible and then not ever officially correcting them with a more reasonable alibi is certainly something a jury can and should consider as relevant evidence - which is why lawyers tell their clients to say nothing from the first second, not to say bunch of stuff first but then shut up afterwards. In my opinion, the case against her (at least on the facts, though apparently not the presentation) was 100% solid for manslaughter - but not even close to premeditation - purely based on Casey’s behavior, and the defenses many flights of fancy seemed laughably unreasonable and like desparate hail-mary’s.
I’m just surprised that what to me (still) seems so obvious does not seem obvious to folks with your opinion (including my wife!) and how your opinion seems so unimaginably unconvincing to me. So I’ll respectfully continue hpefully not too much longer...
“If Casey was just hanging out with her boyfriend listening to music inside and the baby was outide and tripped and fell on something that knocked her out and she slipped into a pool and drowned, Casey would feel like a bad mother, feel guilty, but not want to go to jail for that. She would reason that there would be nothing gained for society by her going to jail for an accident. Fear of dealing with the law for negligence relating to a child is very understandable.”
I don’t see reasonable evidence for this scenario, based on her behavior. It seems like an unreasonable strecth. She would have had to wrap up the body & unceremoniously dump it herself, and then immediately go on a 1-month party spree while not inadvertently giving away any hint to her acquaintances that something unusual has happened, and not having created a halfway believable cover or alibi in that month, and then not have shown any emotion at all when the frantic 911 calls happened on 7/15 or on the days when she was questioned by the police. then for over 3 years she was repeatedly - dozens of documented times - asked by family, by her father & mother, by friends, by police, and by investigators if it was really an accident she was trying to hide, and she denied the truth. Even when police - again documented perhaps a dozen times - told her “we don’t believe your story, we believe it you murdered her, are you sure you don’t want to change your story to something more believable. Then only on the 1st day of the trial had her lawyer claim it was an accident that was someone else’s fault, that someone else forced the cover up, and that she went aong with because she was the manipulated psychological victim (when Casey herself is the one exhibiting the behavior of a manipulative, narcisistic sociopath). Extrememly reasonable to conclude this is all just another self-serving lie, that in light of all other evidence she is directly reponsible for the non-accidental death of Caylee (that is, guilty of manslaughter), not enough to convince me of premeditation, but not even close to threshhold of reasonable doubt.
RE the gas cans from your previous post - I don’t know if he testified during the trial, and if so if anything new came up, but a friend of Casey’s reported to police that in June 17th (I believe, but definitely before the 20th) Casey called him that her car had run out of gas, that he picked her up, took her to her parent’s home where nobody was home, where Casey broke a lock on a shed and took the gas cans (I believe I recall that he also said this was when she borrowed a shovel from a neighbor, to break the lock on the shed to get to the gas cans - but I’m not 100% sure on that), and then he drove away leaving Casey alone with the car & gas cans. Unless that original statement to police has since been impeached or unused, I think there is a very good reason to believe George did not put the gas cans in the car, and I think there is a good reason for why he woud report them stolen - because he came home & found his shed lock broken & things missing. I read a lot of original materials but did not see that much of the trial, so if what I recall about this guys original statement is accurate (particularly the part about the shovel), and if this guy did not testify or ir he testified something different, or if the prosecution seemed to indicate that the gas cans & shovel meant anything different than her-car-was-out-of-gas-in-a-specific-place and nothing-strange-at-all-happened-except-that-she-didn’t-let-me-help-pour-gas, I can be convinced of at least prosecutorial stretch. But not reasonable doubt.
Your hard-working-single-mom analogy is a good study, and I will comment, not because I want anyone to dislike Casey, but because I believe her pattern of behavior is strong evidence of how she felt about her child - that she could not be bothered to do the basic things a parent would do for her child:
- The hard-working-out-of-luck-single-mom scenario “could have been a case that would sound very similar to this one” - I don’t think it does, because the single mom in your scenario is behaved before, during and after the death like a responsible parent who cares for her children. The way Casey behaved before June 2008, during the period of June-July 2008, and for the past 3 years is how I would expect a textbook psychopathic/socioapathic killer to behave (with the stereotypical behavior of parasitic + narcisistic lifestyle, pathological lying, criminal behavior, irresponsibility towards family or school or employment, lack of emotional attachment & lack of empathy).
- “a single mother who works from about 4pm to 12am” - Casey spent her entire motherhood deliberately not working and living on the graces of her parents and petty crime.
- “leaving two children alone at home” - Casey had 2 parents who vountarily cared for Caylee at any time it was needed. Casey deliberately took Caylee out of that house & to nobody-knows-where-because-Casey-won’t-tell, hundreds of times over 3 years, because she was not willing to make the sacrifice of being employed to provide for her daughter.
- “She tries very hard, but has to let loose now and then” - Casey did not try at all, did not even try to get a job, and stole from her family to support her daily party habit.
- “Gets no help at all from the government” - mom & dad provide all, any other help can easily be gotten by getting a job & then not getting fired from it becasue of not showing up.
- “Lives separately from her troubled family that offers very little help to her” - the family (and some perrty crime on Casey’s part) was the sole source of money, food, clothing, shelter for Caylee. And there is no credible evidence either way to suggest if it was the family that was troubled to start with, or if the family was troubled becaused they lived for 22 years with a parasitic, narcisistic, sociopathic, pathologically lying family member.
Which is all why my conclusion has been:
- Absolutely without any shadow of a doubt at all she is a clinical psychopath & what is sometimes called , capable of infanticide. Fantastically unreasonable to conclude anything else (although that doesn’t prove murder yet).
- Circumstances, behavior over 3+ years, and lack of
plausible & reasonably believable exculpatory evidence show beyond reasonable doubt that she caused the death of the child & led the world on a wild goose chase for years to avoid punishment. Maybe I put more weight on a person’s behavior and “profile” than others, but I find it unreasonable to think anyone else on the planet caused Caylee’s death.
- Premeditation not even close to proven.
“Why is the news media blaring about ONLY this ONE case ?”
Agree with your sentiment here 100%. This is on TV because TV & viewers view it as just another type of reality show at everyone else’s expense. Which makes our entire society a bit sociopathic too.