Casey Anthony was acquitted of all counts directly pertaining to the death of her daughter Caylee. She was convicted of the counts pertaining to lying to the police. Chances are that the time she's already been in custody will cover any sentence rendered for that. I was cuaght off-guard by that verdict.
What does this mean in terms of seeking justic for Caylee? In the OJ Simpson case, the state declined to join O.J. on the various golf courses to which he traveled looking for the real killer. They were convinced they had found the real killer, but had lost the battle in jury selection. Will the prosecution conclude in this case as well that they tried the real killer and lost, and so there's no point in searching further for the real killer. Perhaps the state will accept that the child drowned, or perhaps they maintain that Casey is, indeed, the killer but that they lost their chance, as double jeopardy prevents and retrial of Casey.
Will anything happen in terms of warnings of sanctions possibly being taken against attorneys after the fact -- particularly of Mr. Baez? Additionally, is Casey still facing any theft charges independent of the death of her child?
My greatest hope is that reality show featuring Casey Anthony will not become a reality. She makes the late Anna Nicole Smith look like the epitome of class by comparison.
One problem is that when something bad happens, people tend to think: "Well, someone HAS to pay for this!"
ReplyDeleteAnd when a jury does something really, really bad like deciding that the prosecution case is a load of junk and that selected someone is found not guilty by them, people who did not sit through every hour of the case or followed it as closely as some outsider observers, might wonder how the jury reached their conclusion.
The O J Simpson case is a good example. I followed it very closely -watching much of the live coverage- and knew how and why the jury came to the conclusion they did. Same with the Michael Jackson case.
There's an interesting follow-up to the OJ Simpson trial. A private investigator was hired to look into the case and a documentary was made about it.
The PI decided to examine the car of OJ Simpson and found that the blood in the car, some two years after the murder, was still liquid.
This, he knew, was an impossibility. Unless the blood had been treated with a chemical to keep it liquid. Now, the only place were blood would have been found with that chemical in it would have been in the pathology laboratory.
So he drew the conclusion that the blood had been removed from the laboratory and deliberately placed in the car after the death of the two victims and after they had been removed to the morgue for the autopsies.
But that would not have been the only example of evidence tampering and of strange practices at the crime lab involved in this case.
If police officers lie, if prosecutors have an inkling about what has happened, but continue to prosecute the case and try to hide certain cracks in the walls of their case, an astute jury will be like a building inspector and will refuse to pass the case as being structurally sound.
There was an episode of Rumple of the Bailey when a police officer planted evidence against one of Rumple's clients who, Rumple thought, probably had been guilty of robbery.
But it was Rumple's argument that no matter if someone was guilty the minute official witnesses chose to lie, the whole case becomes suspect because that strikes at the very heart of the criminal justice system.