I haven’t heard anything to the effect that some of the members of the jury necessarily thought Casey was guilty of murder, but instead got the impression they felt she was complicit in Caylee’s death somehow and therefore should have been convicted of something. But according to American jurisprudence you can’t convict someone of a crime if all you have to go on is a feeling that they were involved somehow. What the defendant is alleged to have done has to be proven and since no proof was presented that Casey either killed Caylee or was responsible for her death in some other way, the only proper verdict the jury could have rendered is the one they did, without regard to their vague suspicions.
If she was innocent, fine no problem.
If she did it there are two levels here.
First is the kid got no justice and second to all those people in prison right now who were convicted on evidence that was less convincing but the jury found guilty anyway
So you believe in jury nullification for the prosecution? That ‘I think she did it and therefore we ought to try the person again and again until the prosecution can actually prove it.’ is the way to run a justice system?
Do you really believe that? Do you see any problems with that idea? That idea basically tosses out double jeopardy.
Of course, if we had a ‘try them till they are found guilty’ court system I bet we could get a guilt verdict sooner or later.
Slee
Unless I’m misunderstanding you, this is incorrect. A logical inference is exactly what juries are often forced to draw, and “conduct after the fact” is often used as evidence of guilt, or behavior that is inconsistent with a lack of innocence, to word it differently. For example, flight can imply guilt. There’s no legal prohibition from making logical inferences from someone’s behavior following a crime. It’s done all the time. Juries need to consider all the evidence provided.
And I am firmly in the camp that believes someone who does not notify the police for 31 days, lies about “kidnappers,” and then offers up the fairy tale provided by way of explaining a dead body dumped in the woods with duct tape affixed to her face (that has what, exactly, to do with an accidental drowning?)–well, for me, that crossed the “reasonable doubt” line long ago. The jury needs to maintain an assumption of innocence right up to the point where it’s no longer reasonable to do so, and they make that assessment based on all the evidence provided, including how the person behaved after the crime occurred (which they can, of course, dismiss as irrelevant, but they needn’t). That’s the standard--reasonable doubt. Not any doubt at all. No other scenario is plausible to me than Caylee was killed (whatever “degree” one might assign to it), and Casey did it. Nothing else is a reasonable conclusion. If I was a juror, she’d have been found guilty of some form of homicide.
And perhaps that’s exactly the problem.
All kinds of people who were “half paying attention to this case” while they went about their normal lives believe that their conclusions are more valid than the conclusions of the twelve people who for weeks paid complete attention to nothing but this case.
Juries can only make inferences from the facts provided. They can’t make inferences from the inferences they have already drawn. They can infer a guilty mind from Casey’s behavior after the death, but they can’t then infer an act from the guilty mind.
A fact provided is how Casey behaved after the crime occurred. The jury is free to draw whatever inference from that they’d like. If they infer a “guilty mind,” that (along with the rest of the evidence) absolutely could lead them to believe the person is guilty. I’m not sure why you think juries can’t do this. They do it all the time. They are the ones applying the “reasonable man” standard, and if they think it’s unreasonable that a guiltless Casey behaved the way she did, then they’re free to do so and to weigh that conclusion along with the rest of the evidence.
I’m rapidly tiring of the subject for now, so I will leave the other finer points for someone else to address, if they so choose. I’ll only point out that your lack of specificity as to exactly *which *“form of homicide” she is guilty of belies a significant problem.
Why? Here’s a portion of the jury instructions:
They had all kinds of options. I didn’t sit through the weeks of the trial, so I won’t pretend that I understand every aspect of it, but no plausible scenario exists (for me) where she is not at least guilty of the least of these homicide charges, and I could well have been convinced of one of the more serious ones, depending upon the entirety of the evidence. But there’s no reasonable scenario where a little girl’s body dumped in the woods with duct tape affixed to her face wasn’t the result of unlawful homicide.
Simply put, if you had enough legal cause to find her guilty of some form of homicide, you wouldn’t have any problem telling me exactly which form that is. But since you can’t, you don’t.
Nope, that would be yet another illogical inference. Someone can logically conclude something has AT LEAST met a minimum standard, possibly more pending a fuller exploration of the evidence. But enjoy your “gotcha” if you like. I don’t seem to have the emotional investment in this case that some people do.
Well, for one thing nobody knows exactly when within the 31-day period Caylee died. And no one knows just when Casey either killed Caylee or became aware that she had died. Those things would need to be proven before it could be concluded that Casey had failed to notify the authorities that Caylee was missing (to address one area of concern), and before it could be concluded that her behavior at a certain time had anything to do with what she knew or was guilty of at that time.
That “proof” thing is a pesky hurdle but it’s there for a good reason.
Sure there is. She could have died as the result of an accident and then been hidden away by someone fearful getting the blame. I’m not saying that is what happened, but it is a possibility. And we have no proof (or even evidence) that Casey was responsible for either the duct tape or Caylee’s death.
But as a juror you can’t legally (or morally) decide that a defendant is somehow guilty of something and then pick something from a laundry list of charges in order to assure that he or she gets some kind of punishment for it. In a court of law, it must be proven that the defendant committed the crime he or she is convicted of.
There is a declaration of factual innocence, but it’s pretty rare and it’s not determined by a jury.
Casey admitted she didn’t notify–in fact, her defense conceded that she was aware of the death from when it occurred. It was also pretty well-established when the parents (Cindy in particular) last saw Caylee, and when the stories started about the baby being with the fictitious nanny. Casey admitted to the cops she didn’t contact them until after an extensive period of time, while she was conducting her own investigation (her initial story), and she herself acknowledged that it was 31 days in the 911 call. Seriously, there’s no material disagreement from anyone, including Casey, that Caylee was “missing” for an extended time before Casey went to the cops. This particular “pesky hurdle” was overcome some time ago.
The accident Casey said occurred was an accidental drowning. Duct tape has no reasonable explanation if that occurred. So, we have a mom who didn’t report her missing toddler for a month, lied about “kidnappers,” and then the body is discovered abandoned in the woods with duct tape over the face. Consider those facts jointly, not separately.
I only indicated that I didn’t sit on the jury and haven’t sifted through all the evidence. But there’s no scenario where some form of unlawful homicide didn’t occur. I’m not suggesting the jury just pick something.
But then we’d have to believe the drowning story, wouldn’t we? 
And I’m not too terribly sure I do.
Fact is, Strat, you don’t know Caylee was murdered. And if she was, you don’t know by who or even when or by what method. These need to be established before we can convict.
I think Casey buried her, I suspect she may have killed her by accident, but I have no proof on this and neither did the prosecution show us anything definitive.
If I were a juror, I would’ve HAD to vote not guilty on the murder and manslaughter charges.
I wasn’t trying to pull a “gotcha ya” on you, I was trying to get you to look at it from a simple angle without yet again delving into the many specifics. And I really don’t have an emotional investment, (like so many others) if you were implying that statement applied to me.
Look, I’m relatively convinced that Casey Anthony was actually guilty of manslaughter. I’m also relatively certain that she could have easily been convicted of manslaughter had the prosecution not over-charged her with first-degree murder and thus neglected to make the case for manslaughter. But it’s just not the jury’s fault that the prosecution didn’t give them what they needed to make that conviction. It’s a shame it went down that way, but the shame is compounded when the blame that belongs on the prosecution (and the police) for that is placed on the jury. But they don’t have careers in law enforcement to protect, so I guess the blame-shift is to be expected.
If the blame were properly placed in this case, it could lead to improvements. Maybe prosecutors would think twice before pursuing the death-penalty (a very serious endeavor) with such scant evidence. Particularly when they could have easily charged her more realistically, for the actual crimes she much more likely committed, and still put her away for a good long time. Instead they went after what the mob and the media were all clamoring for. They lost, and will now have to suffer while watching her walk. So now the mob and the media are naturally blaming the jury, instead of maybe looking inward and asking the tough questions. It’s easy to get caught up in that and think that the vocal majority simply must be right.
I’m just glad they didn’t move that trial much farther south - I wouldn’t have wanted any chance of being on that jury! Unfortunately, Casey has said she’s now considering moving to S. Florida. First we inherit O.J. (but thanks Vegas!) and now this!?! :smack:
(Maybe we’ll all chip in, send her on a trip to Vegas, and hope for the best.) 
I didn’t say they can’t do it. I said they’re not supposed to. And that’s not how the “reasonable man” standard works.
Nope, we’d just have to believe Caylee was missing for 31 days, a conclusion supported by a number of things, including when the grandparents last saw her and when the nonsense stories started.
I didn’t read the transcripts, so maybe the prosecution could have “strategized” the presentation of the options better (meaning, give the jury the building blocks to convict on lesser charges if, for example, they can’t agree on pre-meditation). But the jurors certainly had the option of deciding manslaughter, for example. So, heck, I’ll blame everybody.
But I do “know” in the only sense required of a jury. People keep asserting this need to “prove” certain things that suggest to me that they think only a certain level of “conclusive” proof is adequate to decide guilt. No. I conclude she is guilty at the point the evidence tells me it’s no longer reasonable to maintain a presumption of innocence. A toddler’s corpse is dumped in the woods with duct tape covering her face? Sorry, it’s not reasonable to think a homicide did not occur, and it’s particularly ludicrous to accept the defense alternative (accidental drowning) with the duct tape in the picture. If Caylee was murdered, it’s not reasonable to think that Casey, who didn’t report the child missing for a month, fabricated stories about kidnappers, lied to the police, offers an alternative explanation that is at odds with the physical evidence, etc., isn’t guilty of it, especially in the absence of some plausible alternative explanation. I can say it’s possible that Casey didn’t kill her daughter, but I don’t believe that’s a reasonable conclusion.
I call the reaction to this verdict the “CSI Syndrome.” We all watch too much TV and believe that there must be some form of Grisolm offering conclusive DNA proof, a specific cause of death from a forensic pathologist, or some other cool and dramatic explanation. That stuff can make it easier, but it is not some sort of basic requirement. People were convicted 100 years ago without DNA evidence, without advanced forensic analysis techniques. How did they do it? Common sense, reason. That’s all this jury needed too.
At this point I can only ask for a cite that a jury is not permitted to draw inferences of guilt from behavior after the crime occurred.
Snip.
Stratocaster, This is what everyone else here is trying to explain to you. You don’t “know” diddle all. All the prosecution presented was a bunch of circumstantial evidence without any hard facts tying Casey directly to the actual death of her daughter. I will grant that you, personally, can feel that evidence is convincing enough to eliminate other explanations for the child’s death but that does not show *Casey’s *guilt either. It simply means that you are convinced the child was murdered, Get it? You don’t need to go to unicorns and pixies to come up with a plausible doubt to Casey’s innocence in the charge of murder.
The defense does NOT HAVE TO PROVIDE ANY ALTERNATIVE SCENARIO. They do not have to provide an alibi, they don’t have to do anything at all but ensure the prosecution doesn’t play fast and loose with the rules. You don’t have to prove Innocence, only guilt.
The jury made the correct choice under the circumstances presented. Cases are decided upon hard facts, not inferences from the sum of hearsay and vague evidence. Many legal experts here on the dope have told you as much already. If ever you are accused of a serious crime, you should hope that the court is held to as stringent of a standard as it was in this case, or else you could find yourself easily railroaded.