Is There Another Missing Baby Case Like Casey Anthony's?

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The discussion centers around the controversial verdict in the Casey Anthony trial, where many participants express disbelief at the jury's decision to acquit her of murder despite circumstantial evidence suggesting involvement in her daughter's death. Key points include the presence of duct tape on the child's body, the delay in reporting her missing, and the mother's behavior during that time, which many find suspicious. Participants argue that the prosecution failed to provide definitive evidence linking Anthony to the crime, leading to reasonable doubt in the jurors' minds. There is a strong sentiment that the justice system is flawed, with calls for reform in how juries operate and the standards of evidence required for conviction. The case has sparked ongoing public debate and frustration over perceived injustices in the legal process.
  • #51
Something interesting, I think something about it has been posted before. There is believed to be a "CSI Effect" which causes jurors to have unrealistic expectations about forensic evidence and the investigatory abilities of law enforcement.
http://www.forensicscience.net/the-csi-effect
 
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  • #52
TheStatutoryApe said:
Something interesting, I think something about it has been posted before. There is believed to be a "CSI Effect" which causes jurors to have unrealistic expectations about forensic evidence and the investigatory abilities of law enforcement.
http://www.forensicscience.net/the-csi-effect

This is true about most things dealing with technology. In a technological age like ours, that technology should make it easy to do anything perfectly and easily - even design new technology. The heretofore unnamed entity, "Technology", is the new superpower that makes imperfection a sin - especially to the person that barely graduated high school and couldn't begin to understand how this 'magic' is done.
 
  • #53
TheStatutoryApe said:
Something interesting, I think something about it has been posted before. There is believed to be a "CSI Effect" which causes jurors to have unrealistic expectations about forensic evidence and the investigatory abilities of law enforcement.
http://www.forensicscience.net/the-csi-effect

BobG said:
This is true about most things dealing with technology. In a technological age like ours, that technology should make it easy to do anything perfectly and easily - even design new technology. The heretofore unnamed entity, "Technology", is the new superpower that makes imperfection a sin - especially to the person that barely graduated high school and couldn't begin to understand how this 'magic' is done.
Exactly what I was thinking. What on Earth did the jury expect from the coroner's report?

Thanks to television, people today believe that teams of rogue doctors will illegally invade a patient's home to find evidence for diagnosis, scientists at a museum take bodies from crime scenes back to the museum, do autopsies, bring in suspects for questioning, and arrest the murderer with iron clad evidence.

We have been led to believe that without positive DNA evidence and a dramatic reinactment of the crime, guilt cannot be assigned.
 
  • #54
As reported, a jury normally spends one day deliberating for every eight days of trial. Short deliberations generally suggest a conviction. This trial went on for six weeks and the jury aquitted her in ten hours. Both alternate jurors have now spoken publically and agree that the case that CA was the murderer was not made. By all appearances, it was a no-brainer that the prosecution did not make the case - it wasn't even a hard decision if one could remain dispassionate.

I not only applaud but celebrate this jury and what they did. It was a highly emotional case that goes right to the heart of a profound and primitive emotion - the genetically driven need to protect or defend a child. But your don't kill a person based on emotions and the horror of the crime. You don't convict someone of murder for lying. You don't convict based on trial by TV. It still matters if you have the right person and have identified the actual crime. You still have to go beyond reasonable doubt. Nevermind that I no longer support the death penalty. This jury refused to allow wild emotion and a media conviction to bias their judgment. They demanded to see a smoking gun and there was none, so Casey was acquitted. That is how things are supposed to work. Not only was I surprised by this verdict [she sure sounded like she was guilty to me!] but I was struck by a deep sense of pride. There jurors made a terribly difficult choice and they did what was right. They are an example of the best of our justice system.

There is no value in compounding a horrific crime with State-sponsored, emotion-driven murder.
 
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  • #55
^I agree. The jury did the right thing. As one of the defense lawyers said, "There's nothing that's wrong with Casey Anthony that can't be explained in two words: pathological liar." I think she may be more than that, but I don't think the prosecution demonstrated that beyond a reasonable doubt. All the evidence I've seen, and particularly what people point to for a guilty charge, to me just doesn't prove that she's guilty of murder. Is it screwed up that she didn't report her child's death and instead went out partying? Of course! However, that doesn't prove she murdered her child. Of all the evidence I've heard from this case, I can only believe beyond a reasonable doubt that she has major psychological issues, including pathological lying and a severe lack of emotional attachment to her child, which I wish they could somehow charge her for. (I'm in favour of the idea that there should be a law requiring that a child's death be reported within a certain time frame) I still can easily believe that she did kill her child, and if that is the case, then I'm deeply saddened that the prosecution wasn't able to make a stronger case. I just don't think the case was there, whether she did it or not.

I don't think this is a case of the jury wanting CSI evidence, the evidence presented was just not strong enough to condemn someone to death. The evidence pointed to the fact that she has issues that would give her the capacity to be the murderer, but there was very weak evidence that she was indeed the murderer. If a series of coincidences made me or one of my family members look obviously guilty of a crime, I certainly would want the prosecution to have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt rather than having everyone assume guilt immediately. I'm quite glad that the media and public opinion don't decide court cases.
 
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  • #56
TheStatutoryApe said:
Something interesting, I think something about it has been posted before. There is believed to be a "CSI Effect" which causes jurors to have unrealistic expectations about forensic evidence and the investigatory abilities of law enforcement.
http://www.forensicscience.net/the-csi-effect

Interesting article. There's something very ironic about it:

Juries want more and more forensic evidence, but this pressure can lead to incorrect test results. On television, forensic tests always go smoothly. In reality, human error in gathering or analyzing a sample can often result in a false positive.

So when the prosecution says "there's a 1 in 4 billion chance that the DNA match is coincidental", what they actually mean is "there's a 1 in 3 chance that the stupid intern contaminated the crime scene DNA with the reference and made the two match". I'm definitely not saying that DNA evidence should be thrown out, just that it's ironic for a greater demand for evidence to lead to more false positives.
 
  • #57
Can you say http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/07/okla-woman-says-he-was-attacked-for-looking-like-casey-anthony/1" ?
"I said, 'Oh my God, help me,'" Blackwell tells KOTV's Lacie Lowry. "She hit me again, causing my vehicle to flip two and a half times, landing on the driver's side, and I just laid there playing dead."

Police arrested Shireen Nalley on charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, Lowry reports. Nalley tells police she was "trying to save the children."
Rhody... :eek:

P.S. Check out the http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0&biw=1016&bih=570" ...
 
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  • #58
There was a report yesterday that a few people (strangers) have made cash deposits into her jail account to support her.
 
  • #59
WhoWee said:
There was a report yesterday that a few people (strangers) have made cash deposits into her jail account to support her.

I'm not surprised by anything a "few" people do. Fiction cannot compare to the actual extremes of human thought and behavior. I'm sure there are some lonely males out there who fantasize about being chloroformed, duct-taped and dumped in a swamp by Ms C.A.

EDIT: They would probably want to skip the chloroform part so they could enjoy the experience.
 
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  • #60
WhoWee said:
There was a report yesterday that a few people (strangers) have made cash deposits into her jail account to support her.

Mostly Bible-toting folk pledging not to judge her, sending money and birthday cards to an accused murderer they've never met. :rolleyes:
 
  • #61
Well, now they are sending them to an acquitted women they have never met. Meanwhile armchair juries around the United States have convicted her all on their own. If I was accused of murder, I'm glad I would have a system that would do its best to ensure I received a fair trial and it wouldn't depend on Nancy Grace's conviction (opinion) on national television.

To anyone that would rather send 10 innocent people to jail than let one criminal go free, I hope that you are the very next person to be convicted falsely. To me, that would be a fate worse than death spending the rest of your life in prison for something you did not do. Not to mention that for every one of those innocent people put in prison, a guilty person would go free.
 
  • #62
Pattonias said:
Not to mention that for every one of those innocent people put in prison, a guilty person would go free.
No, that's not what the deal was.
 
  • #63
She was released from jail shortly after midnight.

She then walked out of the jail building doors and into a dark-colored sport utility vehicle.

[...]

News helicopters that tracked the SUV showed it head to downtown Orlando and into the parking garage of her lawyer Cheney Mason's office.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/07/16/florida.casey.anthony/index.html

And now there are probably a zilliion telephoto lenses aimed at that building from all angles. :rolleyes:
 
  • #64
I had to laugh when I heard people saying how she should act and look. "Don't smile. Don't look cocky. Don't look smug. Look like a mother who has lost a child." Some of this was intended for her own protection but much is just hatred.

The fact is that she may be a victim in all of this. Her child is dead. Her life [as she knew it] has been ruined. Three years of her life were spent in prison. Her family is no doubt damaged beyond repair. And she is now deemed by the media to be the most hated woman in America. I don't know what happened here but she was found not guilty; not even of manslaughter, which really suprised me. That anyone would dare to say how she should look or act is pathetic. People need to stop acting as judge and jury. This imo is a big part of the problem we have in politics now: Everyone's an expert! The real experts - in this case, the jury - are despised and hated if their judgment is not in line with the far less informed.
 
  • #65
Ivan Seeking said:
I had to laugh when I heard people saying how she should act and look. "Don't smile. Don't look cocky. Don't look smug. Look like a mother who has lost a child." Some of this was intended for her own protection but much is just hatred.

The fact is that she may be a victim in all of this. Her child is dead. Her life [as she knew it] has been ruined. Three years of her life were spent in prison. Her family is no doubt damaged beyond repair. And she is now deemed by the media to be the most hated woman in America. I don't know what happened here but she was found not guilty; not even of manslaughter, which really suprised me. That anyone would dare to say how she should look or act is pathetic. People need to stop acting as judge and jury. This imo is a big part of the problem we have in politics now: Everyone's an expert!
Not being found guilty doesn't mean the person is not guilty. It often means we failed to get the verdict.

The jury made a bad call, if they weren't sure she was guilty, they didn't have to find her not guilty, they could've been hung, leaving it open for a new trial should new evidence, or better presented evidence was provided.
 
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  • #66
Evo said:
Not being found guilty doesn't mean the person is not guilty. It often means we failed to get the verdict.

The jury made a bad call, if they weren't sure she was guilty, they didn't have to find her not guilty, they could've been hung, leaving it open for a new trial should new evidence, or better presented evidence was provided.

In 1990 Meir Kahane, an Isreali-American activist, was shot to death in front of at least 35 witnesses in New York City. The shooter, El Sayyad Nosair, was arrested very shortly after following a shoot-out with police. There was literally a 'smoking gun'. Nevertheless he was acquitted on the murder charge. The US justice system often gets it wrong, freeing the guilty and imprisoning the truly innocent. No system can be expected to be perfect, but sometimes it's truly bizarre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Sayyid_Nosair

EDIT: And can we ignore the Rodney King fiasco in Los Angeles (1992), where the jury viewed but didn't "see" what everyone else saw on the videotape?
 
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  • #67
Ivan Seeking said:
I had to laugh when I heard people saying how she should act and look. "Don't smile. Don't look cocky. Don't look smug. Look like a mother who has lost a child." Some of this was intended for her own protection but much is just hatred.

The fact is that she may be a victim in all of this. Her child is dead. Her life [as she knew it] has been ruined. Three years of her life were spent in prison. Her family is no doubt damaged beyond repair. And she is now deemed by the media to be the most hated woman in America. I don't know what happened here but she was found not guilty; not even of manslaughter, which really suprised me. That anyone would dare to say how she should look or act is pathetic. People need to stop acting as judge and jury. This imo is a big part of the problem we have in politics now: Everyone's an expert! The real experts - in this case, the jury - are despised and hated if their judgment is not in line with the far less informed.
re: bold--

And how did that happen?
 
  • #68
Evo said:
Not being found guilty doesn't mean the person is not guilty. It often means we failed to get the verdict.

The jury made a bad call, if they weren't sure she was guilty, they didn't have to find her not guilty, they could've been hung, leaving it open for a new trial should new evidence, or better presented evidence was provided.

How would that work? Jurors can't vote for a hung verdict. A hung verdict is when some of the jurors vote guilty and some vote not guilty.

I'm not sure how ethical voting guilty just to create a hung jury would be if the juror just wasn't sure the suspect was innocent. How many hung juries before the person goes free? Or do they face trial after trial until they either convince a jury they're innocent or the prosecutor convinces a jury they're guilty? And, if they're held without bail, wouldn't that essentially be a way to imprison people without finding them guilty?
 
  • #69
BobG said:
How would that work? Jurors can't vote for a hung verdict. A hung verdict is when some of the jurors vote guilty and some vote not guilty.
That's what I'm saying, they didn't have to all agree and that would end in a hung jury. I read that the jury was instructed that in cases of circumstantial evidence that they should create two scenarios and if one scenario the person could be innocent and the other they could be guilty, that they have to vote innocent. But that's misleading, they don't have to all agree one way or another do they? Can't jurors disagree? I'll see if I can find that again, I've read so many articles. With circumstantial evidence wouldn't it always be possible to create one version that doesn't prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?

Found it.

conviction can be based upon circumstantial evidence. In a circumstantial evidence case, the jury will be instructed that the circumstances themselves must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and that if the circumstances are capable of two constructions, one indicating guilt and one indicating innocence, the jury must select the construction indicating innocence. -- Judge O.H. Eaton

Read more: http://www.wesh.com/casey-anthony-extended-coverage/28198391/detail.html#ixzz1SPdiaBqO
 
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  • #70
Evo said:
Not being found guilty doesn't mean the person is not guilty. It often means we failed to get the verdict.

The jury made a bad call, if they weren't sure she was guilty, they didn't have to find her not guilty, they could've been hung, leaving it open for a new trial should new evidence, or better presented evidence was provided.

Being found not guilty in our justice system means exactly that, that you are not guilty. You may have committed the crime, but you are not guilty of the crime.

If everyone is so convinced of her guilt, why not take her life yourself instead of relying on a group of your incompetent peers to do the dirty deed for you. At least the trial way justice could be served for you and someone else can worry about living with their unreasonable or reasonable doubts about her innocence.

To avoid these kinds of unpopular verdicts I propose that we implement a text message based voting system to determine guilt. That way we can handle these things in a more efficient matter. We already have the publicly televised, play-by-play trials so really just setting up the server (jury) wouldn't even be the hard part.

The way that the American people have behaved with this trial has actually embarrassed me.
As far as I'm concerned this tragedy is between God, the State, Casey and her family. It should have nothing to do with the American mass that reached a verdict before the trial even started. That is why we as a society and culture have decided that a jury of our peers sequestered from public opinion is trusted with determining guilt.

I think there are still countries where you could get away with mob trials and executions. Maybe we should ask them how we should change our trial system to avoid unpopular trial verdicts.
 
  • #71
ideasrule said:
So when the prosecution says "there's a 1 in 4 billion chance that the DNA match is coincidental", what they actually mean is "there's a 1 in 3 chance that the stupid intern contaminated the crime scene DNA with the reference and made the two match". I'm definitely not saying that DNA evidence should be thrown out, just that it's ironic for a greater demand for evidence to lead to more false positives.

The "chance" that is described is all dependant on how it is looked at. It depends on the group (is it the 1/x chance that DNA sample would match someone of x nationality who is female/male in a x location) that is looked at. Sometimes I think they look at all the probabilities and pick the outlier of the group just to make their case look stronger (no one really asks how they get that number).

I'm definitely not saying that DNA evidence should be thrown out, just that it's ironic for a greater demand for evidence to lead to more false positives.
I'd disagree with the conclusion that "greater demand for evidence" is what is leading to false positives. It's probably due to the lack of actual forensic scientists who actually collect evidence at crime scenes. They just train normal police to do that job which increases the chance for problems.
 
  • #72
Pattonias said:
Being found not guilty in our justice system means exactly that, that you are not guilty. You may have committed the crime, but you are not guilty of the crime.

If everyone is so convinced of her guilt, why not take her life yourself instead of relying on a group of your incompetent peers to do the dirty deed for you. At least the trial way justice could be served for you and someone else can worry about living with their unreasonable or reasonable doubts about her innocence.

To avoid these kinds of unpopular verdicts I propose that we implement a text message based voting system to determine guilt. That way we can handle these things in a more efficient matter. We already have the publicly televised, play-by-play trials so really just setting up the server (jury) wouldn't even be the hard part.

The way that the American people have behaved with this trial has actually embarrassed me.
As far as I'm concerned this tragedy is between God, the State, Casey and her family. It should have nothing to do with the American mass that reached a verdict before the trial even started. That is why we as a society and culture have decided that a jury of our peers sequestered from public opinion is trusted with determining guilt.

I think there are still countries where you could get away with mob trials and executions. Maybe we should ask them how we should change our trial system to avoid unpopular trial verdicts.
If the jury was confused and aquitted her due to not fully understanding their choices, then it was a miscarriage of justice.

The jury believed she was guilty but thought that the prosecution had to say exactly HOW she was killed. That's false.

Casey Anthony jurors explain their thinking

One of the jurors who acquitted Casey Anthony on charges of murdering her daughter, Caylee, says he wishes the panel could have found her guilty.

Another juror, 32-year-old nursing student Jennifer Ford, who'd been known as No. 3, expressed similar thoughts to ABC News, saying in a portion of the interview aired Wednesday night, "If you're going to charge someone with murder, don't you have to know how they killed someone or why they might have killed someone or have something where, when, why, how? Those are important questions. They were not answered."
No, you don't, you can get a conviction with only a skeleton and not knowing if they had been cut and bled to death, were smothered, etc... you don't even need a body. You don't need a confession.

"I did not say she was innocent," she (another juror) said. "I just said here was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be."

Jurors don't decide punishment, they decide innocent or guilty. This jury did not believe that she was innocent of the crime, the jury was confused about what to do, based on what they've said.

more

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/07/earlyshow/main20077457.shtml

This goes back to the earlier posts saying that jurors today expect *miraculous, and even non-existant* means of showing who murdered someone and why. That kind of thing just isn't going to happen in most cases.
 
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  • #73
"I did not say she was innocent," she (another juror) said. "I just said here was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be."

This is essentially another way of saying they thought Casey Anthony was guilty of something, but were unable to figure out what she was guilty of.

She could have carefully planned out how to murder her daughter and then did it.

She could have stuffed her in the closet with duct tape over her mouth so she wouldn't have to listen to her and left her in there too long. (This might be murder, but not premeditated murder, and maybe just manslaughter or negligent homicide?)

There's a lot of other ways she could be responsible for her daughter's death, but not guilty of premeditated murder.

I think she should at least have been found guilty for her daughter's death in some way, even if it was a lesser charge, since there wasn't enough evidence to know how the death occurred. That could still be a hard verdict to get to if they just went down each count and asked "Did they prove this charge beyond a reasonable doubt?". To find her guilty, they would almost have to all decide she was responsible for her daughter's death and then agree to pick whichever charge they could agree on.
 
  • #75
MATLABdude said:
They don't even do that for people who're found guilty!

She was convicted of lying - the act of lying caused extra expenses.
 
  • #76
WhoWee said:
She was convicted of lying - the act of lying caused extra expenses.

I think one is a criminal case (now closed), and this new one a civil case. I believe that's how O.J. Simpson was found not guilty in one trial and sued in another.
 
  • #77
Newai said:
I think one is a criminal case (now closed), and this new one a civil case. I believe that's how O.J. Simpson was found not guilty in one trial and sued in another.

Yes - she was found guilty of lying in the criminal case. Now - because she is guilty of lying and causing the Government to incur (additional) costs due to her actions (lying) - they will attempt to make her pay for those additional costs. If she hadn't lied to investigators - some of the costs would not have been incurred. It's fair - IMO.
 
  • #78
WhoWee said:
Yes - she was found guilty of lying in the criminal case. Now - because she is guilty of lying and causing the Government to incur (additional) costs due to her actions (lying) - they will attempt to make her pay for those additional costs. If she hadn't lied to investigators - some of the costs would not have been incurred. It's fair - IMO.

I don't believe either would matter. I gave the O.J. Simpson results as an example. Even if Anthony had been not convicted of lying, the state would still be able to take her to court in a civil trial for lying. But yeah, it's fair.
 
  • #79
Newai said:
I don't believe either would matter. I gave the O.J. Simpson results as an example. Even if Anthony had been not convicted of lying, the state would still be able to take her to court in a civil trial for lying. But yeah, it's fair.

OJ was taken to civil court by the families of the deceased and found "liable" for their deaths. More or less found guilty of the crime that he had been acquitted on.
 
  • #80
TheStatutoryApe said:
OJ was taken to civil court by the families of the deceased and found "liable" for their deaths. More or less found guilty of the crime that he had been acquitted on.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
 
  • #81
Oh no, say it is not happening again, this time with a ten month old:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/17/us-baby-missing-idUSTRE79F06D20111017"
Lisa has been missing since Jeremy Irwin reported her gone from the family's Kansas City home at 4 am on October 4 when he returned from work. Police have questioned the parents at length but have not identified them or anyone else as suspects.

Rhody... :cry:
 
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