As have all of the posters in the many threads (and people at work and in the neighborhood) that keep vomiting up the same “The prosecution just didn’t prove their case” meme. You don’t need DNA, fingerprints, or a murder weapon. You don’t even need a body.
The standard is not, Do we have a videotape of her committing the crime at the 50yard line during halftime of the Super Bowl. The standard is “reasonable doubt” which everyone seems to think, “If I can think of a scenario, even if it involves unicorns or aliens, that makes Casey Anthony innocent, then that is reasonable doubt.”
Nothing could be further from the truth and the public really needs educated on this point.
That’s correct, but wasn’t the trial televised? I have little interest in this sort of thing and I don’t have a TV, but I know the closing arguments were on TV while I ate at a restaurant the other day. If people were able to see the entire trial, then they may not be able to determine with absolute certainty what happened, but they can tell as well as the jury can whether the prosecution proved its case or not.
Many murders do not have the three things that you just mentioned. It is reasonable to infer from circumstances.
Witnesses see two friends walk together into a remote area of the woods. Only one comes back. He never reports his buddy missing. A month later, person two’s body is found in a demcomposing state in those same remote woods.
That’s murder. What other reasonable explanation is there? No need for DNA, a murder weapon, fingerprints, etc.
Sure. I don’t disagree with any of this (well, I think our society has determined that we will abide by the jury’s decision, not that we will “believe” it). In any meaningful sense, my opinion on the subject doesn’t matter at all. But my opinion on who belongs in the Hall of Fame won’t get Keith Hernandez in, either; won’t stop me from having the conversation, because, I mean, why else am I even here?
Even if I grant these, they are not adequate, in my view, to constitute reasonable doubt (and that’s leaving out the fact that I think the motive was clear, and don’t know what “no DNA” is meant to imply or even mean, in this context)?
This is not a good presentation of the issue. My ability to “imagine” a scenario is quite good - I write for a living. I could fabricate a thousand different scenarios is which Casey Anthony is entirely innocent; I could also fabricate scenarios where OJ is innocent, where the Duke lacrosse team is guity, where Osama Bin Laden isn’t really dead but is actually running the Mets. “I can imagine a scenario in which it is possible this person is innocent” is not adequate to establish reasonable doubt.
Negligent or reckless homicide. voluntary manslaughter (intentional killing based on a belief in justification that is incorrect). Accidental death. Self defense.
Really. You think if two people are near each other, and one ends up dead, that not only proves one person killed the other, but that they planned to kill them? How do you know it wasn’t in the heat of passion, or basically an accident?
Exactly. That is not first degree murder. And there are other reasonable explanations. Maybe the guy was bit by a snake or had a heart attack. The other guy panics or goes into shock and tries to hide the body. Horrible thing to do, but it’s not murder.
Aneurism? Bee sting? Gang of bikers? Angry, stalking husband of the woman he was having an affair with? If the body shows no cause of death, it could have been a lot of things.
It does? First, he’s your friend; you don’t want to get him to a hospital? Next, even if he died straight up, you know that people saw you going in together. His wife or friends or someone is going to ask where he is. Pretending that nothing happened won’t work. People will be out in those woods looking for him, and they will be looking at you.
If it is accidental, you want to make sure his body is found so that you can prove your story that it was an accident, not have it found 2 months later when results are inconclusive.
So, no. I submit that it is not reasonable in that scenario to accidentally kill your friend and pretend like nothing happened. Possible? Yes. Reasonable. No.
*And BTW, people have been convicted of murder one on scenarios like I have described.
Again, people have been convicted on this type of evidence.
Why? When their buddy is killed accidentally or of a heart attack, or by a jealous husband, they don’t pretend like nothing happened and assert a 5th amendment right.
Still, you do need some evidence that a murder occurred, and if you want to try someone for it, you need some evidence that they were the one who committed it. In this case, no one knows how Caylee died. She could have been murdered, she could have been accidentally overdosed, she may have wandered unwatched into a swimming pool and drowned, or she may have died in any of a number of other ways. And if you can’t demonstrate how someone died, you can’t demonstrate that they were murdered. And that’s just the first hurdle. If, once you’ve been able to prove that a person has been murdered, you want to charge someone for it, it becomes necessary to furnish proof beyond a reasonable doubt that that particular person was the one who committed the murder.
Neither was possible in this case.
Sometimes a person can be convicted of murder without a body, a weapon, or manner of death, but usually there is some sort of forensic evidence strongly suggesting that that the person was indeed murdered (a large blood stain found through the use of Luminol, for example) and additional evidence strongly pointing to the suspect as having committed the murder. But again, in this case there was absolutely no evidence to prove that Caylee was murdered, and absolutely no evidence to prove that if she had been murdered, Casey was the one who did it.
Reasonable enough to believe that the jury could have a reasonable doubt. Are you saying that people never panic? That sounds pretty unreasonable to me.
OK, glad you recognize that. But the difference about your opinion in the two scenarios (ie, the CA verdict and KH in the hall of fame) is that many people think they are doing something different in the first scenario. That is, they don’t simply think they have an opinion, they think they are determining whether the verdict is “just” in some objective sense. But, looks like you recognize that the two scenarios are exactly te same–you simply have an opinion.