I’m not going to indulge in one of those “I’m superior because I wasn’t paying attention to the Casey Anthony trial” posts. Obviously, it caught my attention to some degree and has prompted me to comment. It came to my attention when a local bug expert testified at the trial and our paper mentioned that fact. From there, the matter percolated into my consciousness one way or another. But, the extent of my “knowledge” is that the daughter of the accused died; the mother didn’t report it for a month; and, in the interim, she apparently went to bars and entered a hot body contest. That last detail is the tell, I suppose. Maybe it says that I’m superficial for remembering something so frivolous. Alternatively, it might be a major point of the exercise.
If this child had been the daughter of someone poor, non-white, and ugly would it have gotten the same coverage? Tipsy makes a point:
Everyone in the country seems to know what happened except the jury. Everyone in the country’s full of it.
The jury system is deeply flawed and unreliable, no doubt, but the press is worse. You, gentle reader, are the product the press “sells.” You’re not paying them anything, but they sell your eyes, ears, and every carnal passion to buyers called “advertisers.” And they’ll feed you poisonous junk food to make sure they’ve got a good supply of eyes, ears and passions to sell.
Goodlookingbabykillingsociopathmother is a very tasty dish, don’t you think? It’s right up there with Hornyashellfrenchbillionairerapist.
Let’s unpack that a little. The point about everyone in the country knowing what happened is very well taken. I am extremely skeptical of the jury system. You just don’t know what you’re getting when you put those twelve people in the box. You don’t know what they’re paying attention to. You don’t know if they understand the legal instructions they’re given; let alone inclined or able to apply those instructions. But anyone who has ever been part of a story that the media has reported knows that what gets reported sometimes bears only a nodding acquaintance with what actually transpired. That’s not usually through any kind of malfeasance of the reporter – things get lost in translation – but, sometimes it is. This is the same media that gave us the unrelenting drumbeat about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq; and that was important. This is just titillation.
The point about what the media is selling I once saw summed up as “if you’re not paying, and you don’t know what’s being sold; it’s probably you.” That being the case, I think the fact that the mother wasn’t ugly was crucial to the story being reported. An unattractive person from a bad part of town wouldn’t have captured the eyeballs for advertisers. It would have been just another tale of misery.
What captured my attention enough to post was the vehemence of the response. It’s easy to talk big on the Internet, but it had the feel of a virtual lynch mob out there. “The jury done wrong; but we’re gonna git her!” Maybe the jury did do wrong; maybe Nancy Grace and the rest of the jackals did a great job of reporting and the Mom is guilty as sin. But I sure wouldn’t want to bet someone’s life on the accuracy of the reporting on something like that.
I certainly agree with you about the uncertainty inherent in the jury system. Where I would quibble with your post is with the idea that people are reacting solely to the media’s dispensing of opinion. The entire trial was on television. I didn’t watch much of it. My wife watched quite a bit of it, enough to have her own opinions about it without relying on the vile Nancy Grace. As I said, I watched very little, but from what I saw I was thoroughly unimpressed with defense counsel. My impression was of a fairly strong circumstantial case, a ludicrous defense theory, and no exculpatory explanation for her conduct in the month that the child was missing. There was physical evidence of the dead child having been in her trunk and of chloroform in the trunk. She had searched the internet for instructions on dealing with chloroform. I think I could probably have convicted her, at least of manslaughter or aggravated child abuse, but the lack of firm evidence about how exactly the girl’s life ended may have been what deterred the jury.
I can’t get all hand-wringy about the titillation factor. Fascination with stories like this is nothing new, nor is the use of trials as entertainment new. Of course the fact that Casey Anthony is an attractive woman from a superficially normal middle class (and white) family is the main reason this is a story. The fact that Sam Shepard was a doctor is why his story was big in the 1950s. Lizzie Borden was a middle class spinster in the 1880s who apparently axed her father and stepmother. The improbability of the crimes is what makes them compelling.
I think too many juries think “reasonable doubt” means that if they personally didn’t witness something, it is therefore not knowable to the exclusion of all doubt. Defense counsel can tell such a jury “A pack of killer unicorns could have done this. Prove me wrong!”, and have a good chance of winning acquittal. Blood of victims in OJ’s vehicle and laundry room meant nothing, because there was always the chance that some OJ stalker could have broken in and deposited there.
My take home lesson is that if you’re going to kill someone, make sure it becomes a national media sensation before trial. Those juries don’t tend to convict.
I wish that the verbal/physical fight between her and her mother the night before she took off would have come out. That would have proved motive. Too bad her mother is a liar and so is she…Now, she can look for the killer with OJ. Oh, well…Time to move on.
Another thing that bothers me is that people seem to think the jury owed it to [I’m sorry; I honestly am drawing a blank on the victim’s name – no fakery] to convict her mother. I would venture a guess that the case was styled “State of Florida v. Casey Anderson, not “The Blood of the Innocent Crying Out from the Ground v. Casey Anderson.”
T, I sat with a juror just like that once in a crimanal case. Bro-ther!
Like it or not, we have what we have here. In the end, it all boils down to what the jury believes has been proved within the confines of the myriad instructions that have been given. Apparently, for this jury much of that of not made clear enough to suit Nancy Grace, et al.
Sad for the little girl, family blasted, community divided. But, all is well in America folks. Looks like everybody will be able to cash in soon enough.
(I think it is Anthony, TT, not Anderson).
For all of you who’ve never sat on a jury at a murder trial, I’m here to tell you it’s not so cut-and-dried as the media present it on TV.
In my case the accused was not an attractive middle-class white girl, but rather a young black man who shot and killed a drug dealer in the dealer’s own home with his own gun in order to steal his stash, his guns, and his vehicle.
This was not a circumstantial case, and the killer’s cousin was an eye-witness against him. In addition, the victim’s weapons were found in the posession of the killer. He was also recognized by an attendant who was paid to repaint the stolen car.
In spite of what would seem to be an open-and-shut case, it was still very difficult to pass judgement on a 19 year old, although we eventually did. The judge gave him 85 years.
It still upsets me to think about it, even though this was a much more obvious case than that of Casey Anthony.
No criminal defendant is required to provide exculpatory evidence. It is the prosecution’s job to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, not the defendant’s job to prove her innocence. I only saw bits and pieces of the trial, but I heard enough in the news that I probably would not have had a problem connecting the dots to at least a lesser degree of homicide, such as manslaughter. I don’t know what charges the jury was presented with, however, nor what instructions they were given about lesser included charges if they were not convinced of premeditation.
Mind you, I think that our criminal justice system has serious flaws, such that high-powered defense attorneys feel compelled to offer the “killer unicorns” defense or some variation thereof, knowing full well that many jurors do not have the critical thinking skills to evaluate tons of information being thrown at them over the course of several weeks. Furthermore, defense attorneys such as Baez know that jurors can and do conflate beyond reasonable doubt with beyond a shadow of a doubt. While I don’t know if there is really a CSI effect on jurors, there are people in this day and age who are unable to analyze evidence and come to a conclusion unless they see a video of the crime or hear a person confess. Many people, including highly educated people, have a vague idea about forensics at best. I’m not all that surprised by the verdict, really.
Jurors can be just as likely to convict on sketchy evidence as they are to exonerate with mounds of evidence. This is how the jury system works in today’s world. Jurors are unable to weigh evidence such that strange verdicts result. Some jurors, such as Manfred, take their duties very seriously. Other jurors do not take their duties seriously enough. Defense attorneys present anything as reasonable doubt. Prosecutors go to extreme lengths to get convictions, even to the point of withholding exculpatory evidence.
High-powered defense attorneys are available to any defendant whose case garners national attention. Will Nancy Grace ever stop to think that had she not hammered away at this case for years that Casey Anthony might have had to settle for a run-of-the-mill defense team and probably would have been convicted? Nancy Grace and others like her present “open and shut” cases to TV audiences rabid for scandal. TV audiences apparently so in denial about the violence that is prevalent all over this country that they believe that little Caylee Anthony is one of maybe a handful of children who disappear and die under suspicious circumstances. Better to believe that than the awful truth, which is that children disappear and die all the time. And most of the time we neither know nor care.
Re: CSI, that makes me think of the movie Superbad.
That bit is kinda funny, if a slightly vulgar, Doug. :) Nevertheless, it proves a point, which is that most people have very unrealistic ideas about how the police and prosecutors work and what information they have access to.
When I worked in vital records (birth and death records), so many people seemed to think we could just press a button on a computer and have their entire family histories ready to hand to them in a couple of minutes. “What? You mean I gotta do some research?” “Yup, ya do. Let me point you in the direction of our lovely public library.” Thank goodness that Morrisson-Reeves was clearly visible from the health dept. at that time.