Posted on 07/06/2011 12:09:07 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
On Tuesday, the jury acquitted Anthony, 25, of murdering her child in June 2008.
The reason, legal analysts and court watchers said, is that despite the seemingly endless hype surrounding the investigation and trial, the prosecution's case simply didn't hold up. There was no forensic evidence such as DNA or fingerprints directly linking Anthony to her daughter's death. In fact, the precise cause of the girl's death was unclear.
"The prosecution put out a lot of dots, but they couldn't connect them,"
(Excerpt) Read more at 13wmaz.com ...
The burden was on prosecutors to prove their theory: that Anthony suffocated her daughter by placing duct tape on her mouth and nose, wrapped her in a Winnie the Pooh blanket and black trash bags, kept the body in the car’s trunk until the odor was too strong, and then dumped it in the woods near her house.
Legal analysts say prosecutors could not tie Anthony definitively to Caylee’s death. Prosecutors had no DNA, hair samples or other physical evidence that would do so.
They introduced controversial forensic techniques, such as an air-sampling method never before used in a criminal court case.
The researcher who pioneered the technique said the smell of decomposition filled the trunk of Anthony’s car. A defense witness countered that the smell could have come from food that had been found rotting in the trunk.
Karin Moore, a law professor at Florida A&M University, said the state’s case was circumstantial.
“Did they prove the manner of death? Did they prove the cause of death?” she said. “The state relied a lot on emotion.”
The case didn’t come apart so much as it never came together. And the prosecutor’s closing statement that “Somebody in that house killed Caylee” was pretty clear in being an admission that they were not certain that Casey had killed the little girl. You can’t get a jury to go beyond reasonable doubt when the prosecution itself has reasonable doubts.
Not sure why they charged her, knowing they had only circumstantial evidence. I’m not even close to being an expert, but it seems like they should have held off on charging her, tapped her phones and her family’s phones and wait until she slipped up and did something incriminating.
And that my friends is the base of the problem, the prosecution and the police screwed up the investigation and focused too much on her being a bad mother.
In the end that didn't prove the crimes alleged...
I'm more shocked that people are actually "shocked" at the verdict. The writing was on the wall from the moment the defense began disassembling the prosecutions case by using their very own expert witnesses against them to discredit all the evidence.
Anyone who couldn't see this coming right then was either stupid or blind...
Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s guilty as sin of something even if this was an accident gone bad or premeditated murder, but the state didn’t get over the hump of reasonable doubt. They didn’t have the evidence and they knew it and gave it their best shot with lots of emotion and character attack. That’s the way it rolls sometimes.
The prosecution proved the case. The jurors are idiots IMO.
Its what they always do... just this time the defendant had a good legal team. If everyone charged with a crime in this country was afforded the level of defense she was, you'd see more and more of the evidence in criminal cases being discredited and tossed as we saw here.
The vast majority of criminal cases are won not because of great police work or good prosecutors. They are won because the defendant cannot afford a legal team.
Basically, in your opinion 90% of murderers should never be convicted.
"Yesterday’s stunning verdict in the Casey Anthony trial has revealed a number of rifts in public opinion. While the overriding public opinion seems to be of stunned outrage, there are a few iconoclasts who feel that justice was served by the jury’s decision of not guilty on the charges of murder. But another, more secondary topic that has been just as hotly debated in the wake of the verdict has been the media’s role in this case. And Casey Anthony Defense Attorney Cheney Mason left little doubt on his true feelings evidenced by his gesture here."
"Shortly after the verdict had been reached yesterday, Mason spoke to the media covering this gruesome and sad story and chose to vilify the very media to which he was speaking. Apparently he wanted to be crystal clear on how he felt about the press, and felt that he needed this particular gesture to get his feelings across. Stay classy Cheney Mason!"
This is what I saw, too. It seems to have worked for many who were not seated on the jury. It would be interesting to learn how the jury wasn't impacted as were many "on the outside".
Many cases are only circumstantial. Like Scott Peterson’s.
Right....
There’s one prosecutor who will never realize a political career.
They demonstrated in that closing that the parents clearly were behaving consistently with a missing granddaughter, whereas Casey was out partying and lying to the family and police. There closing was quite powerful. Most thought it was a winner.
>>The prosecution proved the case. The jurors are idiots IMO.<<
I tend to disagree. The jurors seem to be in good company.
I find it interesting that it has been said over and over that the prosecution was depending on emotion, rather than facts, that those that still think the jury was wrong are the ones that seem to be offering emotional responses themselves. That’s ok, but it is not how courtrooms should work.
If, in 90% of the criminal cases, the evidence is as poorly collected and presented as it was here. And the police investigation was a shoddy as this one then yes... the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt and for a good reason.
the Jury was thinking “Me following legaleeze. Me be smart juror” instead of asking “Did that woman kill her child?”
The ‘case’ got polluted when the defense was allowed in opening statement to ‘criminally’ accuse George Anthony of putting his ..... into his daughter’s mouth before he sent her off to school. THEY were NEVER required to PROVE this accusation....
IF you are a ‘father/grandfather and a woman decides to off her child you have been put on NOTICE it is potentially your FAULT.
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